In the speed skating competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics that ended a few days ago, the Chinese team performed well. Gao Tingyu won the men's 500m with a record for the Winter Olympics, achieving a historic breakthrough in the men's event of continental speed skating since participating in the Winter Olympics in 1980. At the same time, the women's 1500 meters, women's 5000 meters, men's 1500 meters, men's group start, men's team chase and other events have created the best results in the history of the Winter Olympics. The women's team chased the best performance in the history of the Winter Olympics to break the best of the season's plains and close to the best in the highlands, and a number of athletes set a new personal best on the plains in the competition.
At the same time, we should also see that compared with the speed skating powers in Europe, the United States and even the Asian speed skating powers, the number of outstanding athletes in the continental speed skating project is not enough, and the competitiveness in most sports is still limited, especially the men's long-distance event, which is still the focus and difficulty of the Chinese speed skating team in urgent need of breakthrough.
Gao Tingyu makes history
The speed skating event, which produced 14 gold medals, is the largest gold medal in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, and is known as "ice track and field". The shortest distance of the 500 meters is almost equivalent to the "100 meters trapeze" battle in the athletics field. After the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics achieved a "zero breakthrough" in medals for the mainland Winter Olympics four years ago, the 24-year-old Chinese athlete Gao Tingyu successfully fulfilled the promise of "changing medals for color" at the Beijing Winter Olympics, and the Chinese athletes finally reached the highest podium in the winter olympics speed skating men's event.
Gao Tingyu's breakthrough first benefited from the athletes' own talent and hard work. Like most speed skaters, Gao Tingyu has excellent explosive power and speed ability, especially in the first 100 meters, Gao Tingyu has set a world record of 9.32 seconds. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu's first 100 meters 9.42 seconds is already the fastest of the 30 world's top athletes, but it is still 0.1 seconds away from his own fastest performance, so for Gao Tingyu, whether it is the first 100 meters or the total result, we can expect more from him. Talent is always accompanied by 99% of the effort. In the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, Gao Tingyu was plagued by a waist injury for a long time, but with tenacious will and ambition to fight for the country, Gao Tingyu defeated the injury, appeared in the Winter Olympic Games in the best condition, and achieved the "small goal" of winning the Winter Olympics, Gao Tingyu said for the first time that he would continue to work hard for the next four years and continue to work hard to break the world record.
Gao Tingyu's breakthrough is also the result of team combat. Leaders, coaches, scientific researchers, and team doctors have all worked hard and made contributions to the achievements, so Gao Tingyu said bluntly after the game that the gold medal belongs to the country and the honor belongs to the Chinese speed skating team. The National Ice and Snow Sports Training and Scientific Research Base of The Second Seven National Ice and Snow Sports of Beijing Sports University, which has been stationed in the Chinese speed skating team for a long time, has domestic and even international first-class venue facilities, training support conditions and scientific training auxiliary means. Under the background that competitive sports are becoming more and more competitive in the scientific and technological strength and comprehensive strength of a country or region, Chinese speed skaters and Chinese ice skaters in the new era have the conditions and the ability to achieve greater breakthroughs.
Multiple events create the best results of the Winter Olympics
The Chinese speed skating team at the Beijing Winter Olympics won a total of 24 places and 14 athletes appeared on the field, compared with 17 and 11 at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics four years ago.
While the participating projects and participants "expanded", the mainland also created the best results of the Winter Olympics in some projects. For example, Han Mei ranked 11th in the women's 1500 meters, 15th in the women's 5000 meters, Ning Zhongyan in the 7th place in the 1500 meters, 12th in the men's group departure, and 8th in the men's team chase.
The repeated names of "Han Mei" and "Ning Zhongyan" are also important discoveries and achievements of the Chinese speed skating team in this Winter Olympics. Born in 1998, Han Mei Pyeongchang participated in the women's team chase competition during the Winter Olympics, and together with his teammates, he created the fifth-place best in history. Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, as a rare all-around player, Han Mei has made significant progress, in the previous World Cup competition, Han Mei helped the mainland win the women's 1000 meters, 1500 meters, 3000 meters, 5000 meters, team chase 5 precious Winter Olympic places. In particular, the longest distance of the women's 5000 meters, in Norway, sliding 7 minutes 09 seconds 580 people's best time, she directly helped the Chinese team to lock the quota, to achieve the women's team's goal of "full project participation". Although there is still a certain gap between Han Mei's performance and world-class performance in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the characteristics of the all-around and the obvious upward momentum give us reason to look forward to her growth into the future leader of the Chinese speed skating women's team.
Before the competition, Ning Zhongyan and Gao Tingyu were called "Twin Stars", because in the previous World Cup, Ning Zhongyan even overshadowed the 500 meters of Gao Tingyu in the main men's 1500 meters and short distance 1000 meters. Unfortunately, Ning Zhongyan, born in 1999 and participating in the Winter Olympics for the first time, did not play at the highest level and failed to reach the podium. Young is Ning Zhongyan's "short board", but it is also his wealth and advantages, the men's 1500 meters 7th, 1000 meters 5th results have proved his strength, let us and Ning Zhongyan meet together in Milan after four years!
Speed skating is compared to the opponent, but more often than not, it is compared to oneself and oneself. What is rare is that in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the vast majority of Chinese speed skaters have refreshed their personal plain ice rink bests. Compared with the European and American speed skating powers that have more than 100 years and decades of speed skating development history, there is still a big gap in the thickness of the mainland speed skating project, talent reserves, and the number of outstanding athletes, and only through down-to-earth efforts, the performance improvement of one thousandth of a second and one percent of a second can gradually make up for it and catch up.
The women's sprint and men's long distance events have a long way to go
The biggest regret of the Chinese team in the speed skating event of this Winter Olympics is the women's short distance and the men's long distance.
Women's sprint was once the most traditional and advantageous sport in continental speed skating. At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, Ye Qiaobo won the Winter Olympic medals for the mainland in the women's 500 meters and 1000 meters. In 1994, Ye Qiaobo again won the bronze medal in the women's 1000 meters. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Wang Manli (silver medal) and Ren Hui (bronze medal) jointly stood on the women's 500m podium. In 2010, Wang Beixing won the bronze medal in the women's 500 meters. In 2014, Zhang Hong won the first gold medal in the speed skating of the Continental Winter Olympics in the women's 1000 meters of the Sochi Winter Olympics.
However, in the past two Winter Olympic cycles, the Performance of the Chinese team in the women's 500 meters and 1000 meters has not been satisfactory. The best result in the 500 meters of the Winter Olympics was 12th place in Kim Kyung-joo, and the best time in the 1000 meters was 14th place in Li Qishi. For such results, The director of the women's 500-meter bronze medal at the Turin Winter Olympics said that the starting point of mainland women's sprint athletes such as Tian Ruining is actually world-class and has the prerequisites for becoming a first-class athlete, but there is still a big gap in the important technical link of sliding after the start. Ren Hui also recalled that when he was a team member, the domestic 500 meters and 1000 meters talent reserves were very rich, the competition was fierce, and it was difficult to qualify for international competitions, which further enhanced the competitiveness of mainland athletes in the project. However, in recent years, there is a relative shortage of high-level female sprint athletes in China, and there is still a large room for improvement in talent reserves and talent training.
Compared with women's short distance, mainland men's long distance has always been a big gap with the world's high level. The only two speed skating events on the continent that have not qualified for the Winter Olympics are the men's 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters. In the view of speed skating star Sun Longjiang, long distance can best reflect the thickness of a country's or region's speed skating talent reserve and the level of competition training. For various reasons, the mainland has been difficult for men to break through in long distances. The good thing is that through the cross-border cross-discipline selection, the current speed skating national training team has emerged in the excellent long-distance seedlings represented by Hanahati and Kahanbai, and in time, I believe they can carry the banner of long-distance mainland men.
In addition, the men's long distance is equally important for the men's group chase. According to the men's team chase rules, the three athletes have to skate 8 laps, or 3200 meters, in the race. Most of the world's strongest teams choose long-distance athletes to participate in the team, the reason why the mainland can get the right to participate in the Winter Olympics for the first time in the project, mainly due to the outstanding performance of the main lineup composed of Ning Zhongyan, Hanahati and Kahanbai in the World Cup, but due to the failure to obtain the men's 5000 meters, 10000 meters qualification, Hanahati, Kahanbai failed to participate in the Winter Olympics with the team, the mainland can only choose short-distance players to compete in the men's team chase competition, and it is not difficult to understand that the results have not been further breakthroughs. For team pursuit events, in addition to the individual strength of the athletes, the length of cooperation and the degree of tacit understanding are equally important. The Japanese women's team won the event at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago and is still world-class, in large part because of the longer training time. As long as our men's long-distance athletes continue to work hard and strive to obtain the right to participate in the next Winter Olympics, they will not only make up for the shortcomings of the continental speed skating event "full-event participation", but also may achieve a breakthrough in the team chase event.
Photo: Wang Xianmin, Ni Minzhe, Xinhua News Agency