The Chinese team participating in the Ski Jumping Competition at the Beijing Winter Olympics is a new army, and all the players are standing on the field of the Winter Olympics for the first time. After forming a team through cross-border cross-discipline selection in 2019, the team only participated in international competitions for the first time in the 2021 season due to the impact of the epidemic. Despite this, the Number of Participants and Events of the Chinese Ski Jumping Team at the Beijing Winter Olympics reached a record high, and Chinese players appeared in all five individual competitions. However, compared with the strong teams in Europe and the United States, the Chinese team obviously still has a big gap.
Ski jumping is an "unpopular" sport in China, and I have only participated in the Winter Olympics twice in the past. Of the 6 players who stepped onto the Winter Olympics this time, except for the female athlete Dong Bing, who used to train in Nordic biathlon and has a certain foundation for ski jumping, the remaining 5 players are cross-event players. Song Qiwu and Peng Qingyue used to train in athletics, and Zhen Weijie, Lu Yixin and Zhou Xiaoyang, who appeared in the men's team competition, switched from taekwondo, skateboarding and martial arts respectively. In just 3 years, the team has made rapid progress.
Jumping from a jumping platform with a drop of more than 100 meters requires not only courage, but also complete technical action support. Even in Europe, where ski jumping is well developed, a player who wants to stand on the big jump often needs about 5 years of training, and the Chinese athletes who have achieved this goal in two or three years is a great achievement in itself.
The Chinese team participated in the competition for all 5 sub-events, although the results are still a certain distance from the world's top players, but the participants are very young, most of them are through cross-border cross-discipline selection, the training time is still short, and there is a lack of participation experience, and ski jumping is just a project that requires a long period of training and experience accumulation.
Rapid progress in a short period of time is inseparable from complete training conditions, ski jumping training team actively carry out external training, while hiring foreign experienced coaches for teaching. After the completion of the Laiyuan National Ski Jumping Training and Research Base, athletes used the wind tunnel laboratory to train. The wind tunnel can simulate the training environment, allowing athletes to hone the technical action details without being affected by the weather, greatly improving training efficiency. Song Qiwu believes that there are many gaps between them and top athletes, and the biggest gap is the training time.
Although there is still a gap in level, when asked about their future goals, all Chinese ski jumpers without exception answered "the world's top".
The biggest winner of ski jumping at the Winter Olympics was the Slovenian team, which won a total of 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze. In the women's individual event, the outstanding performances of the four players in the team were extremely impressive. At the same time, they have shown strong reserves in the two projects of mixed group and men's team.
Austria and Japan each received 1 gold and 1 silver, and Germany received 1 silver and 2 bronze. These 3 teams are all traditional ski jumping teams with different emphases. The two medals of the Japanese team came from the famous player Ryoya Kobayashi, and the Austrian team was known for its men's team advantage. In contrast, the German team blossomed at many points, and although there was no gold medal in the account, it was gained in the men's, women's and team events.
Norway, which has achieved a great record in this event, has begun to lag behind other teams in terms of talent reserves, although it won a gold medal in the men's individual big jump at the Winter Olympics. Compared to the Slovenian team, which finished in the top five with three players, the Norwegian women's best result was sixth. Outside of Europe, the best Asian team to carry out this event is the Japanese team, which won the gold medal in the project in 1972 and has a long history of ski jumping.
Among the players who won medals at the Winter Olympics were both Ryo Kobayashi and Bogatay, who were in their current years, as well as veterans such as Feitner and Kubacki. The 36-year-old Feitner won a personal silver medal and a team gold medal, becoming the oldest ski jumping Winter Olympic champion. Stoch, the patriarch of the Five Dynasties of Poland, and Simon Aman, the swiss star of the Seven Winter Olympics, also have outstanding performances, and the project is not only for young people.