"I was moved to cry early in the morning."
At about 8 p.m. Beijing time on February 14, Chinese athlete Xu Mengtao withstood the pressure and successfully won the gold medal in the freestyle ski women's aerial skills event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with a near-perfect move.
However, while many people cheered for the 32-year-old female athlete who had worked hard for four Olympic Games and finally realized her sports dream, many netizens from China and foreign countries were deeply moved by Xu Mengtao and the American Ashley Caldwell's post-match action.
As shown in the following figure, just after Xu Mengtao decided to win the gold medal, Caldwell immediately walked up and hugged the excited Xu Mengtao tightly, affectionately calling Xu Mengtao "Peach", while congratulating Xu Mengtao on winning the Olympic championship in his hometown.
Caldwell also said to Xu Mengtao: "I am so proud of you! ”
This transcended the beautiful scenes of politics, countries and races, and also touched many Chinese and foreign netizens in an instant.
An Asian-American journalist working for NBC News said on the overseas social networking site "Twitter" that Caldwell's excitement and celebration of Xu Mengtao was a true display of sportsmanship. She also said that sport can bring people together, not politics and other things.
An Australian sports news producer also said that the moment when Caldwell and Xu Mengtao hugged was too "special", and even if Caldwell made a mistake on the ground in the last jump and did not win a medal, she still wanted to congratulate the Chinese athletes who made history.
"It's so beautiful," he wrote.
In addition to praising Xu Mengtao's performance as worthy of the gold medal, a Canadian netizen said more emotionally that the scene where she and Caldwell embraced together made her "moved to cry early in the morning."
It is worth mentioning here that although the current governments of the United States, Canada and Australia, for the geopolitical purpose of curbing China's development, have all fabricated vicious rumors to slander China under the guise of "human rights" and want to "boycott" the Beijing Winter Olympics, athletes and netizens in these countries who really care about sportsmanship and Olympic spirit have proved the ugliness of these politicians with their actual actions.
Of course, many Chinese netizens also expressed similar feelings on the overseas social networking site "Twitter" about the scene of Xu Mengtao and Caldwell embracing each other, saying that they were moved to tears.
On China's Weibo, Chinese netizens who were touched by this scene wrote the following messages:
"This is what the Olympics are", "This is what human beings should look like", "This is the Olympic spirit".