On February 11, the Most Influential Chinese newspaper in Europe, the European Times, quoted an article in the German newspaper Le Monde as saying that a few years ago, China was still a country that did not perform inconspicuously at the Winter Olympics. For example, at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Chinese team only won 3 gold medals, and the medal table was fixed at 12th. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the number of medals was increased in the number of new projects, so that the number of medals of the Chinese team slipped directly to 16th.
However, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be held in China. If the results are still not ideal, it is obviously not in line with China's self-positioning as a sports power. As a result, China has developed a huge talent training plan, which aims to use the next three years to train the Chinese team to train Winter Olympic athletes who can participate in world events.
Among them, the legendary Finnish coach Kojonkoski and the veteran German athlete Michael Brenner were selected to become coaches responsible for training Chinese youth. The trainees ranged in age from 14 to 18, with Finnish coach Kojonkoski mainly selecting good seedlings from a martial arts school, while German coach Brenner selected potential children from gymnastics, dance, athletics, and kung fu teams.
The training base is not in the country, but in Kuopio, Finland. Many of these children have not even seen the ski slopes, and they do not know what ski jumping is. But every child knows one thing, and that is that they gather in a foreign country for 3 years of ski training for only one purpose, that is, to represent China in the Beijing Winter Olympics and strive to win medals.
Maybe it's every kid who knows what they're here for. Even if they have not received ski training, they are not afraid of difficulties, seriously complete the training taught by the coach, and even some children will add weight to themselves until they can meet the requirements of the coach.
What makes the legendary coach Kochonkoski feel a lot is that this group of children has a fearless temperament. You know, when a novice skier is training ski jumping, the biggest fear comes from standing on the mountain and looking down the valley, and the distance gap will make people feel frightened. However, what he saw in these children was that he was mentally prepared and all the training was going well. Under the high-intensity training, they grew rapidly from novice to a newbie, and the growth rate surprised these coaches.
It wasn't until the fall of 2021 that Kojonkoski's training assignment was over. This is not just a job for Kojonkoski, but more like watching the children he has cultivated grow up slowly, and finally watching them go to their own arena. He believes that these children are already qualified Winter Olympic athletes, and he believes that the medal table will say everything.