"Onion bucket" to win gold is also "tiger mouth pulling teeth" Trekking through mountains and wading through the water to finally see the mountains and small

Live bar February 20 news The last note of "The Golden Bridge on the River of Sorrow" fell, and Sui Wenjing could not control her tears. When Sui Wenjing and Han Cong closed the curtain, teammate Jin Boyang, who was sitting in the stands cheering them on, held aloft a scroll that read, "Will be at the top of the mountain, overlooking the mountains." The short cross is also the story of the Sui Wenjing/Han Cong combination for fifteen years. From becoming famous at a young age to finally reaching the highest podium of the Olympic Games, from Pyeongchang, which left regrets, to Beijing, where dreams were realized, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong waded through mountains and finally reached the top of the mountain.

Winning gold at home is also a tiger's tooth extraction

The pairs free skating competition was scheduled to be held the day before the closing ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and this competition was also regarded as the "pinnacle battle" of the Beijing cycle of pair skating. In the past four seasons, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong have only failed to reach the top podium in one game, but that defeat is enough to leave a lot of suspense for this double skating summit battle.

A year ago at the World Championships in Stockholm, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong lost to Misena/Gallamov and won the second place. Since then, the young Russian duo has been seen as strong contenders for the Beijing Winter Olympics, and they have always seen Sui Wenjing and Han Cong as their goal of catching up. After the pair skating short show, Michelsina/Gallamov is not the only Russian duo to perform well. The two-time World Championship runner-up Tarasova/Morozov, who has been competing with Sui Wenjing/Han Cong for nearly a decade, also slipped out of good form for a long time, trailing Sui Wenjing/Han Cong by 0.16 points after the short program. Although Sui Wenjing/Han Cong also slipped a good score breaking world record in the short program, they were both within 2 points of the difference between them and the two pairs representing the Russian Olympic Committee. In the pair skating arena, such a point difference also means that "anything is possible" in the free skating competition.

The free skating competition is in reverse order of the ranking of short programs, and Sui Wenjing/Han Cong are the last pair to appear in the whole game. Before their debut, Michelina/Galliamov, who made a lift error in the team stage, successfully completed her own show, and Tarasova/Morozov, who has always been free to slide and prone to problems, also "rarely" completed a zero-turnover program. All the pressure is on Sui Wenjing/Han Cong.

Before playing, Sui Wenjing said that the order in which the "Golden Bridge" track and the last group of fourth appearances have always had a "good meaning" for her and Han Cong, as a positive psychological hint. Han Cong only uses the eight words of "overcoming the self and being invincible" to encourage himself and his partner. After debuting, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong opened with a high-quality twist that had not been seen in the pair skating arena for a long time, and the first group of single jumps and the difficulty of the front outer blade spiral newly added this season were also successfully completed. But when she finished Sakhoff's three-week jump, Sui Wenjing's feet fell on ice, and the only mistake in the show also made Sui Wenjing, who was waiting for the score, look extremely tormented. But unlike Pyeongchang four years ago, this time the flaw in the single jump did not make Sui Wenjing/Han Cong pay the price of the gold medal. With an overall higher technical score, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong narrowly defeated Tarasova/Morozov by 0.63 points to win the gold medal that the two dreamed of at home.

Perhaps Sui Wenjing/Han Cong's home gold grab is like the result of years of experience between the two, but only they and coach Zhao Hongbo will understand how precise consideration is needed to win this peak battle. Zhao Hongbo revealed that they had made all the plans before the game, and also thought about the situation that Sui Wenjing/Han Cong might lose. 'The three Russian pairs were very well prepared, skated very well, and we were ready to lose the gold medal." Zhao Hongbo and the team made a "careful calculation" of the twisting around, the spiral of the front outer blade, etc., and also prepared a game plan for Sui Wenjing/Han Cong under different playing conditions of the opponent. "In the master duel, it is almost not good, and we have also made meticulous arrangements on the score of the action."

Although the coaching staff discussed a lot of strategies, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong has always been very firm about the difficulty and challenge twisting around. In fact, in the first half of the Pyeongchang cycle, when Sui Wenjing/Han Cong challenged the Canadian duo of Duhamel/Radford, they were determined to keep up with their opponents and challenge Sakhov to jump around. This time in the backwater battle on the field of the Winter Olympics, Sui Wenjing / Han Cong also have the same belief in twisting around. "We have always had a firm belief in our hearts that the Olympic Games is to pursue 'higher, faster, stronger'." Speaking of the free sliding action arrangement, Sui Wenjing's tone was resolute. "The pursuit of higher difficulty and better programs is also the highest state we aspire to."

At the post-match press conference, some Russian media sharply asked whether Sui Wenjing and Han Cong thought that they were "favored" by the referee, and Han Cong pointed out that he and Sui Wenjing had increased the difficulty in this game, and also believed in the referee's judging standards, and at the same time politely "quoted" the example of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics scoring close as a rebuttal. In fact, in this game, what made Sui Wenjing/Han Cong win was indeed not understood by some people as having a "home blessing" program content score. On the contrary, in the case of obvious mistakes in the program, the content score of the two programs was lower than that of Tarasova/Morozov, who successfully completed the program, and Sui Wenjing/Han Cong actually won the overall score of the technology. Although Sui Wenjing's three-week jump was strictly judged to be demoted and deducted extra points for execution, the two maintained their consistent high quality in double technical moves such as throwing jump and lifting, which earned them the points they deserved. The twisting around the opening of the show played a key role.

How many hardships will it take to climb to the top of the mountain?

In just a few minutes from the end of the free skating program to the time they waited for the score to be scored, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, who left the ice rink and sat in the same division, spent the longest few minutes of their lives. From completing the team competition on the first day of the Beijing Winter Olympics to participating in the individual events two days before the closing ceremony, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong spent the longest two weeks of their lives. "Watching people who live in the same building finish the game is particularly painful." During the waiting period, Sui Wenjing said that she "always cried" and kept thinking "how can I not be yet", coach Zhao Hongbo tried his best to help Sui Wenjing and Han Cong relieve their anxiety before the game. However, compared with the twists and turns experienced by the two in their 15-year partner careers, these pre-match and post-match "torments" do not seem to be anything.

Sui Wenjing/Han Cong can be said to be a pair of ice fans who "see big from childhood", and their injury constitution has been worrying for many years, and Sui Wenjing's foot injury has accompanied her through three Winter Olympic cycles. On the eve of the Sochi Winter Olympic season, Sui Wenjing suffered from epiphysis and ruptured ligaments in both feet, and the results of the Sui/Han combination, which had been in the rising period, declined, and the two also missed the opportunity to participate in the Sochi Winter Olympics. In both the Pyeongchang and Beijing cycles, Sui Wenjing has undergone foot surgery, and there are very few players like her who can still be active on the ice rink while both feet are operated on. Han Cong also completed a hip surgery during the Pyeongchang cycle. But every time the two suffer injuries and surgeries, they always get back on the field as quickly as possible, and their form is almost half a point lower than before the injury. For athletes in any sport, it is not easy to maintain a good state for many years in the case of regular training, and it is not easy to return to the original position after surgery and injury, and the efforts made by Sui Wenjing and Han Cong can be imagined.

In addition to the "injury and illness physique", even if Sui Wenjing and Han Cong became the world youth champion in the second season of the partnership, and 10 years ago, they first appeared on the podium of the Grand Prix at the Capital Gymnasium, but the young and famous duo has not been optimistic about the outside world on the road to growth. "Growing up, we weren't expected to skate for a pair of skates because of our stature. If everyone else is at least 20 centimeters apart in height, we are 10 centimeters apart. In the current first-line pair skating combination, Han Cong is perhaps the most unquenchable in height. After Sui Wenjing/Han Cong won the 2017 World Championships, the second and third place male partners who were more than 1.8 meters tall also "racked" Han Cong on the podium. But it is such an "atypical" pair skating combination that can complete a beautiful twist around and a huge lift covering area of the venue. Han Conghe and Sui Wenjing's throwing and jumping skills made the world championship champion female partner Duhamel envious, and called it "a magical technique that cannot be imitated". Laurie Nicole, a choreographer who has worked with Sui Wenjing/Han Cong for many years, has also always praised Han Cong as a "very good male partner".

Overcoming the physical condition of injury and illness and using harder training to make up for the limitations brought about by the physical condition is a "homework" for Sui Wenjing and Han Cong. On the field, they also experienced a "hard journey". At the beginning of the Pyeongchang cycle, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong are still struggling to complete the transition from junior players to adult players. In order to have a higher program content score, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong have been trying different styles of song selection and choreography, accumulating "impression points" with one stable play after another. When Sui Wenjing and Han Cong finally reached the top podium of the Grand Prix, Finals and World Championships, they became the "top seeds" in pair skating at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. But on the first Trip to the Winter Olympics, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong lost to "legendary female partner" Safshenko with her partner Masot and the gold medal.

Sui Wenjing in Pyeongchang shed tears of regret, but now that I look back, the tears at that time also have meaning. "How many athletes can get medals and gold medals in the first Olympic Games? It was also a valuable experience for us, a good story of life experience. "This time, Sui Wenjing wept again at the end of the show, but this time it was tears of happiness that made her dream come true." The story at that time also seems to have a perfect ending today, so everything is the best arrangement. ”

"Everything is the best arrangement" is also sui Wenjing's most frequently mentioned sentence from the short program of the team competition to the end of the individual event. To reach the top of the mountain, it is natural to go through a hard climb, and the scenery at the top never disappoints every climber. After fifteen years of hand-in-hand and fifteen years of bittersweet sharing, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong finally reached the peak of the mountain they longed for and saw the scenery they were most looking forward to.

(Sports Network)