When Gao Tingyu spread the national flag on his shoulders, he also carried the future of Chinese speed skating on his strong enough arms.
"Wu Dajing?" "Jia Zongyang?" "Han Cong?" "Ning Zhongyan?" ...... Before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, gao Tingyu was not the hottest candidate in the hotly discussed Olympic flag bearer candidate list. From winning the bronze medal at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as a dark horse, winning the historic first Olympic medal for the Chinese men's speed skating team that has been dormant for many years, to carrying the flag of the Chinese delegation at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu always seems to be the one who can create surprises. Now, he has extended this surprise to the Beijing Winter Olympics.
On February 12, the beijing Winter Olympics speed skating men's 500m final, Gao Tingyu was like a lightning bolt, crossing the ice surface of the "ice ribbon" of the National Speed Skating Hall, breaking the Olympic record in 34.32 seconds! This result not only upgraded his bronze medal four years ago to a gold medal, but also won the first gold medal in men's speed skating in history for the Chinese delegation!
"Play at the doorstep, and you're done!" Stepping off the podium, Gao Tingyu still couldn't suppress his excitement. He revealed that he had actually been injured during training the day before, but the game was already in front of him, and he could only show his best form. With this in mind, Gao Tingyu finally completed his predetermined goal of breaking the Olympic record. As the leader of the Chinese men's speed skating team, he used this gold medal to continue to fulfill his expectations and extend the breakthrough of the Chinese speed skating team even further.
Gao Tingyu once said in an interview that his life motto is "everything is the best arrangement." And being able to stand on the field of the Winter Olympics and make a splash, Gao Tingyu's growth process also coincides with this sentence.
Gao Tingyu, born in 1997 in Yichun, Heilongjiang, can be said to have not lacked the atmosphere of skating since childhood, but when it comes to why he wants to skate, Gao Tingyu frankly said: "When I was a child, I wanted to play, because I didn't have to go to class. Gao Tingyu's personality is very straight, even if he is already a bronze medalist in the Winter Olympics, he will still give such a true answer.
At the age of seven or eight, he began to practice skating in Yichun, and then followed the Mudanjiang team to Harbin for a period of training, and when he returned to Yichun, the original school had already removed Gao Tingyu, because the school felt that he was a member of another team. Such a yin and yang thing did not affect Gao Tingyu's skating career, and even in the interview after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, when the host asked about this topic, he replied with the humor unique to the Northeast: "I thank them." ”
The lives of athletes are mostly hard and boring, and Gao Tingyu is no exception. Morning training and afternoon cultural classes are not a happy life for Gao Tingyu, who is not very old. When he was practicing for about four or five years, Gao Tingyu, who was somewhat "tired", once had the idea of giving up because of his unsatisfactory results, and even packed his luggage and was ready to go home. "At the time, I didn't think it was interesting, and the slippery was not fast." Later, my mother said to let me practice for two more days, so she fooled me. Gao Tingyu said. Interestingly, the mother who once let her son insist on it, later saw that Gao Tingyu was very tired in training, and advised her son to "give up", fortunately, this time Gao Tingyu himself insisted.
Gao Tingyu has a good habit of taking the initiative to watch some videos of high-level matches and learn from his opponents. Gao Tingyu, who often watches videos before going to bed, inevitably dreams of skating, and one of Gao Tingyu's hobbies is sleeping, in his opinion, let him do anything, that is, don't disturb his sleep. So love to sleep, naturally dream of skating is also a lot, he once said that he once dreamed that there was only him on the field, no opponent, no finish line, he kept sliding again, and the result was to wake himself up. In this way, Gao Tingyu, who likes to watch the opponent's game video before going to bed, skated "skating" in his dream for three or four years, but constantly drew advantages from high-level players, and gao Tingyu's performance has been moving forward.
In January 2016, Gao Tingyu won the men's 500m speed skating championship at the 13th Winter Games, and was subsequently selected for the national team. In October, he broke the national youth record in the men's 500m event of the National Speed Skating Championships, and in November he finished second in the men's 500m of the Speed Skating World Cup in Harbin. Skating out the results at this time also allowed Gao Tingyu to take a big step on the road of competing for the Winter Olympic quota. In 2017, he continued to set a new personal best and qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
Before setting off for Pyeongchang, Gao Tingyu did not have much psychological burden for the Winter Olympics, in his opinion, to be able to race on such a good track, try your best to skate, and enjoy it. Before the game, he also said that his goal was: just slide down. However, as the competition approached, Gao Tingyu also felt the "pressure".
From his arrival in South Korea to before the final, Gao Tingyu's Weibo followers rose by 10,000, and many fans who liked him would send him private messages, Gao Tingyu recalled that his mobile phone was always ringing, often running out of battery quickly. Gao Tingyu understood everyone's kindness and encouraged him, but this was also an invisible pressure on him, at that time Gao Tingyu uninstalled the Weibo and WeChat in his mobile phone, according to his words: "Even if you don't deliberately look at it, you will see that you can only uninstall it, in order to concentrate yourself and reduce some pressure." ”
Gao Tingyu may be one of the more bumpy players participating in the Winter Olympics for the first time. In the warm-up before the final, Gao Tingyu accidentally fell, to know that speed skating is different from short track speed skating, it is not so easy to fall, and Gao Tingyu at that time even did not want to compare. After some adjustments, Gao Tingyu still stood on the starting line. However, the opponent added to his difficulty. The runners in the same group rushed to run, which forced both sides to a "dead end", and whoever was rushing to run for the second time would lose the qualification, and Gao Tingyu did not dare to start with his own feelings. Fortunately, although the starting rhythm was affected, Gao Tingyu still skated a time of 34.65 seconds, and the next thing he had to do was to wait for the other players to finish the game like Zhang Hong at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
In such a long wait, Gao Tingyu is not thinking more about the ranking, on the one hand, he wants to see how many people can surpass him, and on the other hand, he is looking forward to what kind of results the first place can slide and see the height of the top players in this project.
With the final answer revealed, only two people surpassed Gao Tingyu, who won a bronze medal and made history. Prior to this, the best result of Chinese male athletes in speed skating was the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, where Liu Hongbo finished fourth. Two Winter Olympics have been around for 24 years, and Gao Tingyu was only 20 years old at the time.
Although he said before the game that he did not have any goals for the ranking, Gao Tingyu, who performed well in the test match, still had a little hope for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in his heart. After winning the bronze medal, Gao Tingyu, who was still a little shy in front of the camera, also had some changes in his heart, and in an interview after the game, he said that he wanted to stand next to him, which meant the gold medal.
Zhang Hong's evaluation of Gao Tingyu is: "He is like a dark horse, suddenly coming up, which is good for us as a whole." After all, Chinese men's speed skating has not stood at such a height for many years. ”
An Olympic Games can change a lot, for Gao Tingyu, he will also change from a newcomer to a candidate who many people expect to win gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics, and the pressure can be imagined.
After the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, after several months of rest, Gao Tingyu began a new cycle of preparations. In the six World Cup matches in the 2018-2019 season, Gao Tingyu participated in five games, and the best result was the fifth place in norway in the fifth stop, but the four races changed three ice blades, and various problems frequently appeared, making Gao Tingyu a little overwhelmed.
For young athletes, especially those who have just achieved some results, such a gap still has a certain impact on their psychology. However, that's not all. In an interview after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu said that in the next four years, the biggest challenge will be himself and injuries. The psychological challenges for him have just begun, and physical injuries have followed.
At the end of the 2019-2020 season, Gao Tingyu's old waist injury recurred. In April 2020, Gao Tingyu returned to Heilongjiang Province for recovery training. Before that, whether it was the provincial team or the national team, Gao Tingyu rarely went to massage, he once joked: "Every day a lot of people go, I will not join in the fun, let them rest and rest." However, in the 8 months that the provincial team resumed training, Gao Tingyu in addition to the dormitory, canteen, training ground, the infirmary became one of the venues for his four-point and one-line life. He often had to massage and perform acupuncture, but he was still training, which would increase the load, and later before each acupuncture, he needed to wipe the blood on the back of his waist with alcohol before he could get the needle.
Although it was very bitter, at this time, Gao Tingyu was no longer the boy who wanted to give up and packed his bags to go home, although he was only 22 years old at this time, but in order to go further in the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu could only grit his teeth and insist.
In the countdown to the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu once wrote such a sentence on his personal social media: Three years ago in Pyeongchang, it was a breakthrough and regret. The next year, on the ice, sprint, is dry!
After the waist injury was basically controlled, Gao Tingyu returned to the national team. With the efforts of the national team and the personalized training for him, at the end of September 2021, in the 2021-22 speed skating elite league held in Xinjiang, Gao Tingyu skated 33.83 seconds in the men's 500 meters event, breaking the national record while also creating the third best result in the history of the project. Gao Tingyu said, "Don't let me adapt to it, adapt to it, nothing is wrong." ”
The breakthrough at the beginning of the season has greatly helped Gao Tingyu to restore confidence. On November 12, he won the championship in the men's 500m race of the Speed Skating World Cup in Poland with a record-breaking result. This is the first time that Gao Tingyu has reached the highest podium of the World Cup, and after two years, he has returned strongly.
Gao Tingyu, who missed the second leg of norway because of a waist injury, could only start from Group B in the third leg of the United States, but he finished first in Group B and surpassed all the group A players who appeared later to reach the final. Unfortunately, because of the two rushes, Gao Tingyu was disqualified. But this did not have much impact on Gao Tingyu, and in the first competition of the men's 500 meters in Canada, Gao Tingyu skated a time of 33.876 seconds, breaking the original record of 34.00 seconds. Although Canada's Dubriel broke in 33.778 seconds, Gao Tingyu won a silver medal with a difference of 0.098 seconds. And the number of times he skated 34 seconds this season is also in the forefront.
Before the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu had gotten rid of the problem of injuries with the help of the medical team, and the problems such as rushing and running exposed in the World Cup sub-station were gradually improved in the training before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Gao Tingyu, who has experienced an Olympic Games, is no longer as dazed as he was four years ago, but the pressure is heavier than four years ago. Just a few days before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, he was entrusted with the heavy responsibility of being the flag bearer of the opening ceremony of the Chinese delegation, "It is a great honor to be the standard-bearer of the Chinese delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics." Playing at home is an extremely exciting thing, and the identity of the flag bearer makes me more powerful. It's also a role I've always dreamed of. I will certainly live up to this trust and strive to show my best side on the field. ”
This is a passage written by Gao Tingyu on his personal social media. Now, standing on the field of the Beijing Winter Olympics, he has fulfilled his promise. From the moment the gun sounded, Gao Tingyu turned all opponents into chasers, shattered the Olympic record, and left his name, the name of Chinese speed skating, in the honor book of the Winter Olympics forever.
At the flower-awarding ceremony, Gao Tingyu jumped to the top of the podium of the Winter Olympics, a dream that supported him through the difficult Beijing Winter Olympic cycle. Facing the camera, Gao Tingyu's tone was a little excited, "This is the first gold medal of Chinese (men's) speed skating, and Chinese speed skating will get better and better!" As he spread the flag over his shoulders, he also carried the future of Chinese speed skating on his strong enough arms.
Next, Gao Tingyu will also compete in the men's 1000 meters, looking forward to his continued strength in the next speed skating competition, leading the Chinese men's speed skating to a higher goal.
Wen | Wang Zheng
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