On February 19, Beijing time, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics speed skating men's collective departure final staged a peak showdown. In the end, Ning Zhongyan of the Chinese team won the 12th place. After the men's 1500m, 1000m and team pursuits, he missed the Olympic podium again. The winner of this event went to Belgian Swains, and South Korea's Jung Jae-won and Lee Seung-hoon won silver and bronze medals respectively. With the end of the men's collective start event, this Winter Olympics, China's speed skating ended with only one gold medal.
Unlike the traditional speed skating competition, which has a track for each athlete and does not affect each other, the group starting event and short track speed skating are similar. It not only requires athletes to have sufficient physical fitness and ability to accelerate the back distance, but also requires athletes to always maintain a cool head and effective tactical execution on the field to win in the final stages of the game. In this Winter Olympics, the overall performance of the Chinese speed skating team is not as expected, as of now, it is only in the men's 500 meters event, Gao Tingyu won a gold medal, and other individual events have not been harvested.
Ning Zhongyan, who has attracted much attention, has not been able to inspire his best state, and returned empty-handed in the men's 1000 meters and 1500 meters events, which disappointed many people. The men's group start final is the final match of the speed skating event of this Winter Olympic Games. In the previous semi-finals, Ning Zhongyan entered the final with a third place in the group, which was also the first time that the Chinese men's speed skating team qualified for the final of the event at the Olympic Games. Another Chinese player, Wang Haotian, was 12th in the second group and missed the final.
Before the final, Ning Zhongyan said in an interview that his biggest problem at present is self-confidence, due to his poor performance in the previous single event, he was a little depressed, but he did not know how to release it. For the final of the group departure, he stressed that he would do his best. In this Winter Olympics, Ning Zhongyan can be described as the "labor model" of the Chinese speed skating team, not only to participate in the men's 1000 meters, 1500 meters events, but also to strive to achieve historical breakthroughs in the men's team chase, collective departure and other projects. Therefore, netizens also called him and Han Mei, who also participated in multiple projects in the women's team, as "labor model brother" and "labor model sister" respectively.
The men's group final of speed skating gathered the highest level athletes in the world today, including Belgian Swains, South Korea's Jung Jae-won and Lee Seung-hoon, all of which were gold medal favourites. In the end, after fierce competition, Belgium's Swains overtook all his opponents in the final moments to win the first Olympic title of his career. South Korea's Jeong Jae-won won the silver medal and teammate Lee Seung-hoon finished third. Ning Zhongyan only won the 12th place in the end due to the fact that there was still some gap between the overall strength and the top masters.
(Luo Treasurer)