On the evening of February 11, in the men's steel frame snowmobile competition at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yan Wengang, a young player who participated in the Winter Olympics for the first time, won the third place in 4 minutes 01.77 seconds, and the Chinese steel frame snowmobile achieved a breakthrough of "zero" medals at the Winter Olympics.
From scratch, the speed of progress of the Chinese team is as fast as the steel frame snowmobile on the "Snow Dragon" track last night. On the evening of February 11, in the men's steel frame snowmobile competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yan Wengang, a young player who participated in the Winter Olympics for the first time, won the third place in 4 minutes 01.77 seconds, proving the strong strength of the team with a valuable bronze medal, and also achieving a breakthrough of "zero" medals for Chinese steel frame snowmobilers in the Winter Olympics. This is the seventh medal won by the Chinese delegation at the Winter Olympics, and it is also the first time that Chinese athletes have stood on the Olympic podium in the steel frame snowmobile event. The young general, born in 1997, rewrote the history of China's steel frame snowmobile.
Yan Wengang and Yin Zheng have pushed China's steel frame snowmobile to a new height, and through this window of the Beijing Winter Olympics, China's steel frame snowmobile is also getting more attention.
The steel frame snowmobile is an ancient and typical sport at the Winter Olympics, which has become an official sport as early as the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. But it was nearly a hundred years before the long-established sport began to develop in China. After the successful bid for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese steel frame snowmobile national team was established in 2015. Although the establishment of the team is not long, this young team has made breakthroughs in the two Winter Olympic cycles of Pyeongchang and Beijing. On the "Snow Dragon" track of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese steel frame snow team also showed the world "Chinese speed".
At the earliest, there were no professional steel frame snowmobile athletes in China, and the steel frame snowmobile national team began to select materials after its establishment. In the field of steel frame snowmobiles, cross-border cross-item selection is a fairly common selection method. Amy Williams, the women's champion at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Liz Jarnold, who won the women's division at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics, and Yoon Chengbin, a South Korean who opened the record for Asian athletes at the 2018 Winter Olympics, were all transferred from athletics. This is because the steel frame snowmobile project requires athletes to have excellent explosive power, to be able to provide enough acceleration for the steel frame snowmobile during the starting stage of the cart, and the physical fitness of the track and field athletes is quite similar to the conditions required for the steel frame snowmobile project.
Referring to the foreign steel frame snowmobile team selection standards, in August 2015, the steel frame snowmobile national team completed the first cross-border cross-border selection, Geng Wenqiang, who made history for the Chinese team at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and Yan Wengang, who appeared at the Beijing Winter Olympics, are from this selection, before joining the team, both were long jump athletes.
For the new players who crossed the discipline, the steel frame snowmobile is still an unfamiliar sport, and the team has been updating its members between trying and running in. After the completion of the initial selection, the steel frame snow team completed several cross-border cross-item selections. Yin Zheng, a sprinter who previously studied at Beijing Sport University, joined the team in 2017.
After selecting the right athletes, the journey of the steel frame snowmobile national team has just begun. At that time, there was no steel frame snowmobile track in China, and the team could only travel to Europe and North America in the winter, getting familiar with the characteristics of each track little by little, and initially the team members could only rent or reuse the equipment that was eliminated by others, and the accidents and injuries caused by the improper equipment were inevitable. During the summer training, the team members of the steel frame snowmobile will carry out some physical training in China, and use the simulated trainer that replaces the steel blade with a wheel to practice the cart departure technique.
With the approaching of the Beijing Winter Olympics and the completion of the construction of the National Bobsleigh Center, the steel frame snowmobile national team has a standard track "Snow Dragon" in China, and also has more complete training facilities. The National Bobsleigh Center is equipped with a training hall dedicated to the departure of the practice track, and the digital scientific training assistance platform developed by the Scientific Training Group of the Winter Sports Center of the State General Administration of Sport is also put into use here.
In addition to having its own home track and a more scientific training environment, the steel-frame snowmobile national team also has its own equipment, and the previous rental and recycling of other people's equipment has become a history. At the Erqi Training Center in the southern suburbs of Beijing, the team members will also use wind tunnel experiments to grasp the best posture for sliding on steel-frame snowmobiles, and test and improve the equipment.
In the past, in the steel frame snowmobile field, the one-piece suits and steel frame snowmobile shoes designed and manufactured by European and American sports brands occupied the mainstream, but the Chinese team members will wear boots designed by ANTA original design to be lighter and can effectively reduce wind resistance in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. After testing, the boots can improve by an average of 0.023 seconds compared to other brands in the starting propulsion phase. Sometimes the difference between the winner and loser of the steel frame snowmobile project is accurate to the unit of 100 minutes and seconds, and the starting of the push cart is the most important technical link of the steel frame snowmobile race, and it is of great significance to be able to increase the speed at this stage. Just as "if you want to do a good job, you must first use it", for athletes, they can improve their performance with equipment and equipment, and they can also invest more energy in other technical aspects other than the start of the cart.
Although the steel frame snowmobile national team was initially built like a blue wisp of the road, the players soon made a breakthrough in the international arena. After just one season of practicing steel-framed snowmobiles, Geng wenqiang twice finished in the top eight of the Intercontinental Cup in 2016-17, and in the following 2017-18 season, he ushered in a higher-level and more competitive World Cup event. In November 2017, in Lake Placid, usa, Geng Wenqiang, who participated in the World Cup for the first time, achieved a good result of 7th place. In the points system obtained for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics qualification, Geng Wenqiang, who debuted in the international arena, ranked 27th with the efforts of two seasons, and also got a ticket to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
At the Pyeongchang Alpinia Glide Center in February 2018, Chinese athletes appeared for the first time in the steel frame snowmobile competition at the Winter Olympics. Geng Wenqiang once skated out of the second round of the tournament to be 7th, and finished 13th after all four rounds, which is a huge improvement from his 21st place at the World Championships last season.
With the experience of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Geng Wenqiang's cycle in Beijing has gone further. In January 2020, Geng Wenqiang won the third place in the World Cup la Plagne in France, which is also the first time that a Chinese player has stepped on the podium of the Steel Frame Ski World Cup. At that time, Geng Wenqiang was tied with Pyeongchang Winter Olympic champion Yin Chengbin, only behind Sochi Winter Olympic champion Tretyyakov and six-time World Champion Martin Ducurs. After a season off due to the epidemic, Geng Wenqiang reached the top podium at the World Cup in Innsbruck, Austria in November 2021, becoming the first player to win the Steel Frame Snowmobile World Cup.
In Geng Wenqiang's view, he was able to make a breakthrough in these two races, thanks to the improvement of starting technology and the progress of cornering processing. The accumulation of track training time has given Geng Wenqiang a better understanding of steel frame snowmobiling, and in those more difficult tracks, he has also found the right way to feel.
In the view of Schmid, the head coach of the steel frame snowmobile national team, Geng Wenqiang's breakthrough is actually a manifestation of the team's achievements in the accumulation and learning stage. In order to impress the home audience at the "Snow Tour Dragon" track at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the steel frame snowmobile national team has been accumulating gliding miles and consolidating basic technology step by step, only to break out during the race.
From the Pyeongchang cycle to the Beijing cycle, Geng Wenqiang is the player with the brightest results and the most breakthroughs in China's steel frame snowmobile, while at the same time, his teammates are also growing rapidly. The men's players Yan Wengang and Yin Zheng, who stood out in the team selection competition and played at the Beijing Winter Olympics, are the players who ushered in the breakthrough in the Beijing cycle.
Yan Wengang, who will turn 25 this year, was a teammate selected to enter the steel frame snowmobile national team at the same time as Geng Wenqiang, but the first milestone of Yan Wengang's steel frame snowmobile career came a little later. In October 2018, Yan Wengang won the European Championship at King's Lake in Germany, which also brought more confidence to him who had hovered at the bottom of the previous two seasons. At the end of the season, Yan Wengang, who has been accumulating a lot, qualified for the higher-level Intercontinental Cup and World Cup competitions, and his ranking has quietly reached the range of about ten places. The following 2019-20 season, Yan Wengang twice finished in the top eight in the World Cup and finished 11th at the World Championships at the end of the season, which is also the best place china has achieved at the World Championships.
In the Pyeongchang cycle, Yan Wengang had many opportunities to compete, but at that time, his performance seemed to be far from the coach and his expectations. Yan Wengang, who has just begun to contact the steel frame snowmobile, also admits that he is "a very grumpy person", but when he sinks his heart, everything begins to change. The victory at The King's Lake Station was more like pushing Yan Wengang onto the upward trajectory it deserved. The boy who considers himself "timid" but loves extreme sports such as the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race has finally pushed his limits on the steel frame snowmobile field.
Yin Zhengze, who only joined the team in 2018, has a rocket-like upward trajectory. When he tried skating for the first time, he still felt that "his heart was always beating" and "nervous and cold", and he won the second place when he participated in the North American Cup for the second time in 2019. In the 2019-20 season, Yin Zheng's ranking in the North American Cup also remained stable in the top eight. In February 2020, Yin Zheng, who made his world cup debut, finished 9th at the Sigurda circuit in Latvia. In the 2020-21 season, Yin Zhengze won 4 European Championships and 1 Intercontinental Cup.
Unlike the two more senior teammates Geng Wenqiang and Yan Wengang, Yin Zheng, who has professionally practiced sprinting, also has a very prominent technical feature - his cart starting ability is the world's top. Although in the past two seasons, Yin Zheng has appeared more in the lower level of the North American Cup and the Intercontinental Cup, but the two Sigulda circuit to participate in the World Cup, Yin Zheng's starting speed is one of the best among the runners in the whole field. But the problem that has always plagued Yin Zheng is that he is thin and not big enough, and he has not been selected by the snow team's cross-border cross-border for the same reason. Although the weight requirements of steel frame snowmobiles are not as strict as those of snowmobiles, if athletes are lighter, the acceleration of skiing will also be affected. In the case of little experience and poor physical conditions, Yin Zheng still frequently achieved good results in international competitions, which is enough to prove his potential.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yan Wengang, a late bloomer, and Yin Zheng, who has unlimited potential, join hands to board the "Snow Tour Dragon" track of the National Bobsleigh Center, where they once again prove that China is no longer the "desert" of steel frame snowmobiles, and show the world the "Chinese speed" of steel frame snowmobiles. After the breakthrough of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese steel-framed snow team still has much potential to be tapped, and more answers may be found at the Milan Winter Olympics in four years.
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