The persistence of the four Winter Olympics, Valentine's Day in 2022, is the day when Xu Mengtao and the coveted Olympic gold medal "finally become a family".
Back on July 12, 1990, a baby girl was born into an ordinary family in Anshan, Liaoning Province, but she had a well-known aunt, Liu Lanfang, a famous storyteller and performance artist. "Meet Tao Gong in your dreams, smile and look at the red dust", Liu Lanfang named her Dream Peach, hoping that she could live carefree in Tao Yuanming's peach blossom garden.
I don't know if I was blinded by listening to my aunt tell the stories of those heroes every day, Xu Mengtao showed extraordinary physical talent from an early age. When she was four years old, her father found that her body was very flexible and sent her to the gymnastics training class of Anshan Sports School. But then, for developmental reasons, she was no longer considered suitable for practicing gymnastics. In 2002, 12-year-old Xu Mengtao switched to the field and began to practice freestyle skiing aerial skills, and now won the first Olympic gold medal, just 20 years.
Freestyle skiing aerial skills are China's "trump card" in snow sports, and in many cases even the only hope of rushing gold. But unlike Han Xiaopeng,who created history in turin in 2006, Chinese women always seem to be accompanied by "sadness" in this project, and one silver medal after another is a recognition of their strength and efforts, but it is also a proof that The Goddess of Luck has left them again and again. From winning the World Cup in Moscow in 2009 to winning the World Cup in Canada in January this year, Xu Mengtao has won a total of 27 World Cup titles, and is the first person in the history of freestyle skiing aerial skills.
But what about the Olympics of her dreams?
In Vancouver in 2010, she was a fledgling and ranked sixth; in 2014, she came to Sochi, and before the competition, she was considered the hottest to win the championship, and she landed flawed and won a silver medal. At that time, she could still smile and face the camera and say that she would come back in four years. In 2018, Xu Mengtao said the harsh words of "retiring without winning the championship" in Pyeongchang, but the result was the most brutal one. After the game, she couldn't stop her tears when she was 9th and didn't make it to the medal showdown: I didn't want to cry, I really tried my best...
Perhaps it was the Winter Olympics held at the doorstep of xu Mengtao that gave Xu Mengtao the courage to fight again. Putting on the battle robe for the fourth time and standing on the olympic field, she said: "As an ice and snow athlete, I feel that I am really fortunate to be able to participate in the Winter Olympics at my doorstep, this is also my fourth Winter Olympics, I hope to show the best performance on the field of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and put my most perfect actions in the Beijing Winter Olympics!" ”
This time, she did not "break her word" again. A few days ago, in the mixed team final round, Xu Mengtao, the first appearance of the Chinese team, played this set of "backflip three-turn 1080 degrees" with a difficulty coefficient of 4.293 almost perfectly, and the roar that did not know how long it had been shouted after landing steadily also moved countless Chinese audiences in front of the TV. Unfortunately, one of the teammates' "forward rolls", and the medal on the chest still does not change color. The most painful thing is that she not only did not blame her teammates, but was the one who tried to comfort her the most. Xu Mengtao is very clear that freestyle skiing aerial skills are such a project of "doing everything and obeying the destiny". She once said, "No matter what changes in the outside world, the only constant is to train hard, in the midst of uncertainty, to insist on certainty." ”
Heaven help self-helpers, luck has finally come. In the first round of today's final, Xu Mengtao jumped more than 103 points in the first jump, and after steadily advancing, she chose to give up the second test jump and leave her best state in the final battle.
In the gold medal round, the first defending champion Hushkova to play an excellent level in a difficult action, scoring a high score of 107.95, while the three players who appeared since then have made more or less mistakes, including teammate Kong Fanyu, who danced the same as himself, which undoubtedly made people sweat xu Mengtao's mentality. Fortunately, she boarded the Winter Olympics for the fourth time, and she is no longer the "Wuxia Amon" of the past. It is still "backflip three-turn body 1080 degrees", running, jumping, landing steadily, and it is the familiar roar... It's certainly not one of her most beautiful jumps in the air, but her bent calves in slow motion show the ability to adjust for "twenty years to sharpen a sword.". At 108.61 points, she overtook Khushkova, completely dumping the pressure on Caldwell, who was the last to play. The moment the Americans touched the snow when they landed, we all knew that Xu Mengtao had won.
20 years of youth, 27 World Cup titles, the first Olympic gold medal. A family, two generations of jointly written the "legend of the female general", tonight to achieve a new colorful chapter.
Author: Guo Chaohao
Editor: Guo Chaohao