Author: Xie Bian Editor: Jia Fangfang
Source: Journal of Marriage and Family
ID：hunyinyujiating99
At the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Chinese team won the best results in history of 9 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze.
I still remember that on February 5th, the short track speed skating mixed team 2000 meters relay race, Wu Dajing was the first to rush to the finish line, Wang Meng's "my eyes are the ruler" commentary: the first gold of the Chinese team was born!
More memorable February 12, speed skating men's 500 meters final, Gao Tingyu skated 34.32 seconds, breaking the Olympic record, winning the first winter Olympics men's speed skating gold medal in Chinese history!
Wu Dajing, Wang Meng, Gao Tingyu, behind these world champions all stand the same woman - Li Yan, the former head coach of the Chinese short track speed skating team and the current head coach of the Chinese speed skating team.
This year is the fourth Olympic cycle led by Li Yan to lead the Chinese team, with 4 Olympic games and 4 gold medals:
At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Wang Meng won the championship and knelt down to thank Li Yan;
At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Li Jianrou won the championship without suspense;
At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Wu Dajing won the championship on a horse;
At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu broke the Olympic record and won gold.
Li Yan not only brought out many world championships, but also won the first Olympic medal in China's short track speed skating.
Single-mindedly guarding the glory of China, what kind of legendary life does this woman have?
01
In the 1970s, 100,000 intellectuals rushed to the Northern Wilderness, and Li Yan's father, who was a professional soldier, was one of them. When he arrived at Baoquanling Farm in Heilongjiang with his family, Li Yan had just turned two years old. On that perennially snow-covered farm, Li Yan began his own skating path.
In the early morning when an opening could breathe white, Li Yan's feet slid up in the snow with his skates covered with wire. After a few rounds, her shoelaces were frozen and unopened.
For Li Yan at that time, skating was just a game that her friends were playing, and she never dared to think that one day she could stand on the world stage.
In this way, she skated on the ice in simple skates and grew up with her friends day by day.
As soon as people grow up, their personality traits are also highlighted.
Li Yan was the most stubborn one in the family. Every time her father scolded, she would twist her neck and refuse to admit her mistake, and then she was beaten without suspense. However, even if she was beaten, she did not admit her mistake, we were so grumpy!
One day when he was eight or nine years old, Li Yan was skating on the school road and was just seen by the teacher. The teacher threw her a pair of skates and told her to "follow the practice." Li Yan took the skates and saw that the ice knife was embedded in the sole, a little high, and it was very different from the "earth skates" he had worn in the past.
She was too happy to be happy.
After entering the school team, Li Yan made rapid progress, especially the flexible and free momentum of Yi Shangbing, the teacher looked at it and felt that this child was incredible.
In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee was held, and the "reform and opening up" that affected countless Chinese was officially launched. It was also in this year that Li Yan was recommended to enter hejiang Juvenile Sports School.
After entering the sports school, Li Yan's goal is very clear: the upper part of the sports school is the provincial team, and the provincial team is the professional team.
However, an injury six years later nearly ruined her athletic career.
In a race, Li Yan fell down when she crossed the corner with full force, and after losing her center of gravity, the huge centrifugal force threw her out and crashed into the baffle.
In an instant, a sharp pain struck, and she looked down to find that her left knee joint muscles were all torn, and the white bones were exposed. Soon, the medical staff carried her on a stretcher to the infirmary. That time, 47 stitches were stitched.
But surprisingly, she quickly recovered from injury and was transferred to the national team 3 years later.
At that time, the Chinese Olympic Committee had just regained its legal seat, and there was a huge gap with the traditional European and American powers in major ice and snow events.
In 1980, at the 13th Lake Lesside Winter Olympics in the United States, China sent a total of 28 athletes to participate in 18 individual events such as skating, skiing and modern biathlon. In the end, none of them made the top six. At that time, the Western media joked that China took two firsts in the Winter Olympics: "the first time to participate" and "the first to last".
Four years later, at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, the Chinese delegation sent a total of 37 athletes to participate, and the best result was that Jin Xuefei won the 19th place in the alpine skiing competition. There is still a big gap between gold and silver.
This situation was finally reversed at the next Winter Olympics, because Li Yan came.
At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, Li Yan participated in the women's short track speed skating 1000 meters exhibition event (at that time, this event was not an informal event). In this exhibition match, Li Yan transformed into an ice elf and soared wildly, quickly leaving a group of opponents behind.
"When I listened to the coach shouting that there were still two laps left, I thought how could I still be the first? How come no one has surpassed me yet? That feeling is really different. But I immediately thought, don't think about it so much, just grit my teeth and increase the frequency, until I try my best to cross the finish line, I believe that I am an Olympic champion. ”
After the game that day, the Canadian Olympic Committee made a poster for Li Yan, with the Chinese flag and Li Yan as the protagonists, and four big characters in the middle - the dragon soaring.
Although Li Yan failed to win the gold medal four years later at the Albertville Winter Olympics (she won the silver medal that year), she had achieved a medal "zero breakthrough" for China's short track speed skating.
At the opening ceremony of this year's Winter Olympics, Li Yan passed the sacred flame as one of the infield torchbearers. Think about it over the years, it is she who has led the way, and only then has the long-term glory and vitality of the Chinese team.
02
In 1994, Li Yan retired.
After retiring from the military, she did not immediately become a professional coach, but entered Dongbei University of Finance and Economics to study international finance. In school, she recovered the time she had missed in her early years because of frequent training, taking classes with her classmates every day, going to the canteen to eat after class, self-study in the evening, and exams at the end of the semester.
During this time, she also entered the marriage hall with Tang Guoliang, a former national ski champion. Life is calm and regular, and the joys, pains, and obsessions on the training ground are gradually fading away.
Until one time, she saw a group of children in the park rollerblading, and she had been away from the field for many years, and she immediately got excited, immediately put on her roller skates, and slid up on the field, spinning, jumping, and non-stop.
The children and adults around them all looked stupid, only to say which way this hero was, so extraordinary. When Li Yan stopped to rest, someone recognized her, and it turned out to be the world champion!
That day, Li Yan taught the young players to roller skate on the roller skating rink, and in an instant, all those passions of that year returned to the chest. The children were also very enthusiastic about asking her for guidance.
After that day, Li Yan found that he enjoyed the time with the children very much, so a thought began to come to mind, that is, to run a "skating club".
First, Li Yan found that the children in the northeast have very good physical fitness and are very suitable for ice sports; second, cultivating seedlings in the club model is already a very mature model abroad.
"If this can be done in Shanghai and Guangdong, I don't believe I can't do it." As soon as Li Yan's stubborn temper came up, no one could hold back. Soon, the local skating club in Dalian was set up.
Li Yan attended classes, studied, and wrote papers while taking the children to train in the Xishan Reservoir, and the club's funds were all out of her own pocket. Before the competition, she will also personally sharpen the ice knives for the children.
Once, a child fell, injured his knee, and cried. Li Yan immediately ran to comfort her after seeing it, but no matter how she said it, the girl still cried very badly.
At this time, Li Yan made a clever move, opened his pants leg, and revealed the wound that had been stitched 47 times ago: "You see Auntie's leg, which fell (cracked) when skating." There were a lot of stitches in the operation, and as soon as the stitches were removed, I went down to the ground to exercise, and the result was that blood leaked out along the eye of the needle. At that time, the coach thought I couldn't skate, but my aunt thought that as long as I could stand up, I could get back on the ice. ”
The more he taught the children, the more Li Yan felt that he was suitable to be a coach.
In 1999, a Czech sports delegation visited China and offered that China would send an athlete to the Czech Republic to train their short-track speed skating, and the authorities found Li Yan.
At that time, Li Yan had graduated from university and was assigned to the Dalian Local Taxation Bureau as a deputy department-level cadre, with a stable job and a good income. But after receiving the news, Li Yan agreed without hesitation. Soon, she was pulling her suitcase and heading to Europe.
At the end of the 90s, the Czech Republic was completely from scratch in short track speed skating, and after Li Yan passed, in just one year, the Czech Republic achieved two single fourth and sixth all-around at the European Championships, and had the first short track speed skater to qualify for the Winter Olympics.
The Czech president therefore received Li Yan, who also recognized his level in this coaching experience. After that, she went to Austria to coach, and for 10 months helped the Austrian national team out of the trough.
After two eye-catching European coaching records, the United States on the other side of the ocean also threw an olive branch to Li Yan. In 2003, Li Yan became the head coach of the American youth team, and two months later, she was promoted to the coach of the U.S. national team, and at the age of 35, she was about to usher in a new stage of life.
Many times, we always remind ourselves to be rational, to be stable, to plan for our future, but we rarely realize that in fact, only by doing what we like can we effortlessly persevere and achieve good results.
2003 was Li Yan's first year in charge of the European and American teams, and the team included the famous player Apollo. When he first arrived in the United States, he was not familiar with life and English, and Li Yan could not tell too many details when communicating with the team members, but constantly trained, trained, and trained.
Because she practiced too hard, Apollo affectionately called her "Crazy Woman". However, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Apollo managed to win the men's 500m short track speed skating crown. After winning the championship, he quickly rushed to Li Yan and gave her a big bear hug.
"That hug contained everything, and I think that's the biggest affirmation of my coaching experience in those years." Li Yan said. After more than two years of training by Li Yan, Apollo's achievements have reached the highest level in his career.
It is worth mentioning that the 8 gold medals in skating at the Turin Winter Olympics, the South Korean team won 6, the two that were not obtained, one was taken by Apollo, and the other winner was Li Yan's future disciple Wang Mao.
After leading Apollo to the championship, Li Yan was awarded the title of "Best Coach" by the American Ice Association.
At that time, the house in Colorado had been settled, her husband Tang Guoliang also arrived in the United States and got a diploma in sports medicine, and her daughter Bella was born and will turn two years old. On the weekend, his good friend Lang Ping came to the house to eat, and after eating the bean paste and the dumplings, the two of them lay on the sofa while watching TV and chatting, not to mention how happy they were.
No matter from which point of view, Li Yan is a proper "winner in life".
But at this time, the conscription from the motherland made Li Yan once again choose to be righteous.
03
"How old I can't keep up with your pace." I got to Europe and you came to America again. I just came to the United States to stabilize, and you are back home again. In May 2006, on the eve of Li Yan's return to China, her husband Tang Guoliang said so.
From receiving the invitation to the national team to accepting, Li Yan only took a week. 30 seconds after submitting her resignation report, every member of the U.S. team called her and said, "You don't have to go to China." (They don't use "back")
But Li Yan deeply remembers the cultivation of the motherland, and China will always be her "first choice". However, it is not so easy to return to China to coach "export to domestic sales".
China's system is different from that of the United States, and the relationship between Chinese athletes and coaches is also different from that of other countries. For these, Li Yan, who had just returned to China, obviously did not attach too much importance to them.
On the ice rink, she assigned tasks to the team members, without too much explanation, and went back to their homes after class, just training and life.
The players felt that the coach had a "sense of distance", did not care enough about people, blurted out English words from time to time, severe and frightening, so behind her back called her "stepmother", the "stepmother" who did not hurt her children.
Wang Meng, the strongest in the team, is particularly unconvinced by Li Yan, who feels that Li Yan's success in coaching the American team does not mean that she is also capable of teaching the Chinese team well, and she has also "squeezed out" her mentor (former coach).
Such a contradiction broke out after Wang Meng lost the 1500m gold medal at the 2007 Asian Winter Games:
"I didn't make any tactics at all, just say, you know how to slip, right?" After this competition, I will apply to go back to the local team to train, the national team is not suitable for me. ”
A stone stirred up a thousand waves, and the news of Wang Meng's "shelling" of the coach began to overwhelm the earth. After that, Wang Meng was banned for 8 months, and Li Yan also ended his first year of coaching in various controversies.
When he returned to the United States for a vacation, Li Yan seriously considered the current dilemma, and suddenly became enlightened: don't forget why you came here, you want to change.
The next year, Li Yan quickly adjusted his coaching style and narrowed the distance between him and the team. As soon as there was a problem, he communicated with Wang Meng at the first time, and cared about Wang Meng's injury, and gave her a lot of useful game suggestions. A talented player like Wang Meng, with a little guidance, can surprise the whole audience.
Soon, the team was on the right track.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wang Meng successfully defended the gold medal in the 500m short track speed skating. After the game, Wang Meng slid in front of Li Yan, threw himself on his knees, and prostrated his head on the ice, moving Li Yan badly.
That year, the Chinese team won four gold medals in short track speed skating and achieved a Grand Slam, which was the highest peak reached by the Chinese skating team after the millennium.
After the peak, the test comes immediately.
In 2014, on the eve of the Sochi Winter Olympics, Wang Meng accidentally fractured his bones during training. When the news came out, everyone pinched a sweat, Wang Meng was absolutely a king-like presence in the 500-meter short track event, without her, the Chinese team did not say that Geng continued the glory of the previous session, even if it was difficult to get a gold medal, the whole team was also very nervous.
At this time, Li Yan's quality as an excellent coach was fully displayed. Instead of panicking, she ordered a 28-year-old veteran to take over Wang Meng.s role. The veteran is Li Jianrou, who later won the championship, when she was 28 years old and had experience in the competition, but Li Yan was interested in her calm and decisive personality, thinking that she could become a "strange soldier" of the Chinese team.
Sure enough, when it came to the Sochi arena, when Fan Kexin and Liu Qiuhong, two veterans, were unexpectedly out, and foreign players were all staring at the gold medal so that people turned on their horses, Li Jianrou calmly crossed the finish line and was crowned Olympic champion.
In addition, Li Yan also specially concealed the recovery of the 1500-meter player Zhou Yang, so that the South Korean team thought that the gold medal was coming at the top, and the result was disrupted, and the gold medal was successfully collected by us.
This operation, do not accept the no.
At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, in the face of a large number of unfair penalties, it was still Li Yan who stepped forward. Although it is difficult to shake South Korea's home field advantage, the Chinese ice and snow athletes have not lost anyone, and Wu Dajing has uncontroversially won the gold medal in the 500-meter short track speed skating.
Last year, three months before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Li Yan re-took charge of the national team.
04
From 2006 to 2022, 16 years have passed, and when she returned to China to teach, Li Yan's daughter Bella was only two years old and is now standing tall.
For years, teachers suspected Bella of being a child of a "single-parent family." Speaking of his daughter, Li Yan said:
"In the future, she will know what her mother did during this time - to lead the Chinese team to win the gold medal in the Winter Olympics, and she will be proud of me."
She said, "Faith is invisible, and you have to believe it and fight for it to succeed in the end." ”
The phrase "the dragon takes off" 34 years ago was not only Li Yan, but also referred to all Chinese athletes.
The legend they continue to write on the ice rink is also the story of China and the Winter Olympics and ice and snow.
In the future, everything will continue.
Resources:
"Face to Face • Strivers • Li Yan"
"Short Track Li Yan" Weekend Character Workshop
"Short Track Li Yan" Sports Online Interview
"Every Day" Li Yan documentary