A few days ago, the good news came from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics: Qi Guangpu, a 31-year-old veteran of the Chinese ski team, won the gold medal in the freestyle ski men's aerial skills final with a high score of 129.00. This is the second time in 16 years that the Chinese Winter Olympic Team has won the highest honor in this event since Han Xiaopeng won the championship at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. In this issue, the Ziya Children's Fun Sports Observer led everyone into Qi Guangpu's sports career.
In most of us, most of the athletes in the mainland ice and snow sports seem to come from the colder north, but Qi Guangpu is an exception.
Qi Guangpu was born on October 20, 1990 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. Although born in the warm and humid south, Qi Guangpu has a strong interest in ice and snow sports. When he was only four years old, accompanied by his parents and followed his initiation mentor, he began to learn and practice freestyle skiing aerial skills.
In this sport, it is common to fall and injure during training. For four-year-olds, it is difficult to endure this kind of boring and dangerous exercise. But Qi Guangpu was different, according to his parents' recollection, his son faced these trainings, no matter how hard and tired, almost never shed tears.
At the age of eight, under the guidance of his coach, Qi Guangpu began to practice trampolines to lay the foundation for the training of aerial skills. At that time, in order to train, he had to get up every day before dawn, first go to the team to train, wait until seven o'clock and then run to school to study, and after school at four o'clock in the afternoon, he continued to return to the team to train, so that he could practice until seven or eight o'clock in the evening before he could go home.
Because of his talent and hard work, Qi Guangpu was selected by the Changchun Freestyle SkiIng Aerial Skills Team at the age of ten, where he began professional freestyle skiing aerial skills training.
From the warm climate of Xuzhou to the cold northeast, Qi Guangpu faced not only more frequent and complex training, but also had to adapt to the local dry and cold climate and a completely different diet from the south.
At the beginning of training, he felt that aerial skills should not be difficult, with his talent and hard work, as long as the skiing is good, the movement should be learned quickly. But to his surprise, during the first aerial training, he did not finish half a lap because of insufficient control, and he plunged into the snow pile.
The first failure was not a mistake, and Qi Guangpu quickly felt that the difficulty of training had really increased. In addition to high-intensity, difficult training, there are also day-to-day, boring physical training. Every day I live a repetitive life, I do heavy training, but I can't see my progress at all.
Qi Guangpu gradually became confused, and felt more and more that he had lost his initial enthusiasm for this sport. He began to doubt himself that maybe he wasn't a good fit for the sport at all. At the same time, the loneliness of being in a foreign land also swept through his body and mind, and he began to have the idea of returning home.
That day, he did not say hello to the team, and ran to the train station by himself, wanting to buy a ticket to take the train home. But because of his young age and only one person, the conductor at the station did not sell him tickets, and Qi Guangpu wandered at the ticket window, ready to find a way to get on the train, when a person stopped him.
This person is Yinggang, who is the instructor of the Changchun Freestyle SkiIng Aerial Skills Team. Seeing the silver guidance, Qi Guangpu was ashamed and afraid, afraid that he would punish himself. However, the silver guide was not angry, instead of scolding him, he also took him down to the restaurant, and the two of them ate a delicious dumpling together, and then sent him back to the dormitory.
The next day, the teammates who trained together in the team all came to comfort and enlighten him, and looking at the concerned eyes of the coach and teammates, Qi Guangpu deeply realized his mistake. He secretly made up his mind that he must stick to this sport, train hard, and become the pride of coaches and parents.
Since then, Qi Guangpu has studied and trained harder, and even on holidays, he rarely rests. Northeast weather cold, this sport can only be trained outdoors, training time is generally from November to March of the following year, it is the coldest time in the northeast, sometimes the temperature even reaches minus tens of degrees.
In this difficult training environment, he has never complained and slackened, since joining the team, he has only spent the Spring Festival at home once, and the rest of the time is spent in competitions or training.
Kung Fu pays off. Qi Guangpu's efforts were not in vain, and after he was able to participate in the competition, the results achieved were very impressive. In 2008, it was Qi Guangpu's first appearance, winning the men's team championship in freestyle skiing aerial skills at the 11th National Winter Games.
In the following time, he did not become proud, but began to train harder. In 2013, Qi Guangpu perfectly presented the action with a difficulty coefficient of 5.0 for the audience at the World Championships, and finally won the World Championship championship with a high score of 138 points.
The action was extremely difficult, spearheaded by Belarusian Anton Kushnier at the 2009 World Championships, requiring the athlete to toss straight in the air for three weeks and turn around for five weeks. Not only does it require extremely high skill, flexible adaptability, but also strong physical support.
Qi Guangpu once said that this action is not only difficult, but sometimes it needs a little luck. At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Qi Guangpu did not fully grasp this action, and finally failed to complete it perfectly, missed the medal, and finally only won the fourth place.
Later, he did not give up, but practiced more diligently, hoping to better master this movement. In 2017, he won the overall championship of the year in the aerial skills of the 2016-17 Freestyle Skiing World Cup. He also finally mastered this skill and action because of continuous exploration and hard work.
At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Qi Guangpu was full of confidence and wanted to prove himself at this Winter Olympics. As a result, the mistake in the second round of landing, the prepared 5.0 action has not yet been shown, and it is over. Neither of the two Winter Olympics has won a medal, which is a great regret for all athletes.
As the saying goes, "Failure is the mother of success." Qi Guangpu was not intimidated by the failure. He said that this project and action are very difficult, it is the result of on-the-spot response, psychological adjustment and game luck, and it is one of the most accidental events in the Winter Olympic Games.
Soon, the Beijing Winter Olympics cycle arrived. In order to prepare for the Beijing Winter Olympics and not to shame his country, Qi Guangpu began to practice more diligently, he wanted to show his true strength to the world at the Beijing Winter Olympics. However, at this time, Qi Guangpu was already thirty years old, he was no longer the young and vigorous young man he was then, and his physical strength began to decline.
At the 2019-2020 Aerial Skills World Cup Russia-Moscow station, Qi Guangpu fell to the snow when he fell because of a mistake in his movements. After being taken to the hospital for examination, it was found that the collateral ligament on the medial side of his left knee was torn and he also had a slight concussion in his head. And this kind of pain, for Qi Guangpu, is all too familiar and normal. He simply cultivated for a while and then returned to the game again.
Before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Qi Guangpu said to the camera that until now, the biggest opponent is himself, if his movements are played normally, he believes that he can win everyone. This sentence is not bragging, Qi Guangpu really did it.
On February 16, in the Zhangjiakou Division of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Qi Guangpu successfully won the gold medal in the men's aerial skills final of freestyle skiing at the 2022 Winter Olympics with a good result of 129.00 at his doorstep, realizing the Grand Slam of his career and winning the supreme honor for the motherland.
For more than 20 years, with perseverance and determination, Qi Guangpu has broken through himself again and again, created brilliance, won countless honors for himself and his country, and let the world witness the true spirit of sportsmanship and the Olympic spirit.
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