The Beijing Winter Olympics produced a total of 11 gold medals in biathlon, and Norway swept 6 gold medals to dominate the spot. The Chinese team participated in the competition for 10 of the 11 sub-events, and the number of participants achieved a historic breakthrough. In the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, the Chinese biathlon team has significantly improved the overall level of the team by hiring the world's high-level foreign teacher team, although there is still a certain gap with the international top level, but the Chinese biathlon has finally found a way forward.
Fill in multiple gaps Asia is leading the way
Compared with the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, which only had two female players, the Chinese team at the Beijing Winter Olympics qualified for 4 men and 4 women, which is the second time after 30 years that the Chinese team has won 8 seats in the event. In addition to the 7 sub-competition qualifications determined before the start of the Winter Olympic Games, Chinese athletes have obtained 3 qualifications in the men's and women's pursuit competitions and collective departures, which are determined according to the performance of the Winter Olympic Games.
At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, a new biathlon 4×6km mixed relay was added, which the Chinese team had never participated in before. The Chinese team qualified for the Beijing Winter Olympics and eventually finished 15th among the 20 participating teams. What is even more valuable is that in the men's 15 km collective departure event, Cheng Fangming represented the Chinese team for the first time. The men's 15 km collective start is equivalent to a biathlon all-around competition, the participating athletes are the 30 athletes with the highest comprehensive level in the world, in the past, There was a big gap between the men's biathlon level and the world's top level in the past, and it was difficult to qualify for the Winter Olympics. But Cheng Fangming at the Beijing Winter Olympics qualified for a collective departure with his outstanding performance. "Cheng Fangming's participation in the collective departure is a landmark event in the history of biathlon in China, indicating that the development of biathlon in China has taken a step forward." Chinese biathlon team leader Liu Hao said.
For a long time, the biathlon field has been dominated by Europe and the United States, and the status of Asia is low, and china did not have a leading edge even in Asia. Compared with Japan, Kazakhstan and other countries, China's overall level is still different from them. Through the efforts of the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, China's biathlon has been at the forefront of Asia. Through the Beijing Winter Olympics, it can be clearly seen that China's overall biathlon performance is the most prominent in Asia, and most of the results of Chinese athletes are the best in Asia.
In the relay event, the 4×6 km mixed relay Team China ranked 15th, the highest ranking of Asian teams, the Japanese team ranked 18th; the men's 4×7.5 km relay, the Chinese team won the 16th place, and is also the only Asian team to participate; the women's 4×6 km relay, the Chinese team won the 12th place, better than the Japanese team 17th, is also the best result of the Asian team. In the individual event, Tang Jialin, a veteran of the women's 7.5 km sprint and participated in the Winter Olympics for the third time, won the 35th place among 89 participants, which is the best ranking of Asian athletes and her own best result since the three Winter Olympic Games. In the men's 10 km sprint, two Chinese athletes, Cheng Fangming and Yan Xingyuan, ranked 32nd and 40th respectively among the 94 participants, ranking better than other Asian teams. In the subsequent chase and group race, Cheng Fangming made history consecutively, finishing 22nd in the men's 12.5 km pursuit, the best result for Asian athletes, and also created the best result in the history of the Chinese team in this event. In the finale of the collective starting competition, Cheng Fangming was the only Asian player to participate, and the 30th result also wrote a new history of the Chinese team in this project.
The number of participants increased to complete the replacement of old and new
Eight Chinese athletes will compete in biathlon at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the highest number of participants in 30 years. Among the 8 players, only 1 has experience in the Winter Olympics, the others are all first-time athletes, and the youngest athlete, Ding Yuhuan, is only 18 years old.
In the past 10 years, Tang Jialin and Zhang Yan have been representatives of biathlon in China, and both of them are ahead of other players in China in terms of competition experience, gliding level and shooting skills, but in the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, this situation has changed, and more and more young athletes have emerged, who are constantly catching up with Tang Jialin and Zhang Yan.
Zhang Yan lost the Beijing Winter Olympics at the last minute this time, Tang Jialin participated in 4 events, and Meng Fanqi and Chu Yuanmeng also participated in 4 events. In the women's 15 km individual competition, Chu Yuanmeng played well, winning the 35th place among the 89 players, which was the best performance among the 4 Chinese female players, in this competition, Meng Fanqi and Chu Yuanmeng had better shooting stability, they only missed the target in the end 2 shots, while Tang Jialin missed a total of 4 shots.
The 30-year-old Tang Jialin also felt the progress of her young teammates, Tang Jialin believed that Chu Yuanmeng and Meng Fanqi should "pick the beam", "They can look forward to the future, and the winter biathlon should be resisted by them." Young players such as Chu Yuanmeng and Meng Fanqi have always been one notch lower than Tang Jialin's level, but now that they have begun to pick the beams, it is foreseeable that Chu Yuanmeng may become a more prominent main force in the future. Participating in the Winter Olympics this time, we also clearly see the progress of these young people. Liu Hao pointed out.
On the men's side, Cheng Fangming, who won the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics, maintained a high level, and at the age of 27, he became the first biathlon in China to achieve full-event participation in the Winter Olympics so far. "I want to show the mission of biathlons in China to pursue faster, higher and stronger." Cheng Fangming said.
In addition to Cheng Fangming, the 25-year-old Yan Xingyuan's progress is more pronounced, after he participated more in cross-country skiing competitions, starting in 2018 to participate in the Biathlon World Cup. At the beginning, Yan Xingyuan had been hovering among the eighty or ninety. But in just over 3 years, his results have improved by leaps and bounds. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yan Xingyuan finished 39th in the men's 20 km individual event, 40th in the men's 10 km sprint, ranked in the top 60 of all the runners and then qualified for the pursuit, and won the 41st place in the men's 12.5 km chase, which was unimaginable more than three years ago.
The high-level foreign teacher team promotes the project to be in line with international standards
"After Bjordalen came, he promoted the internationalization of the project, and the progress of the team was the result of his leadership in recent years." In summarizing the performance of the Chinese team at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Liu Hao said, "The foreign teaching team has made our training methods and methods closer to the international system. ”
In order to improve the level of biathlon in China, the team hired a high-level foreign teacher team in 2019. The Norwegian, the "king of biathlons" with eight Olympic gold medals, Bjør Darren became the head coach of the biathlon national training team and the head coach of the men's team, and his wife Domraceva became the head coach of the women's team. The arrival of Bjord Dahren's foreign teacher team has brought about changes in biathlon in China, from concept to technology to physical fitness, etc., and has begun to be in line with international standards.
Chu Yuanmeng believes that the foreign teacher team has improved their understanding of the biathlon project, in Chu Yuanmeng's past cognition, a race is a whole, but Bjordalen asked Chinese athletes to break down the 3 laps into 3 1 laps, or break it down into a race made up each uphill.
In Yan Xingyuan's view, the progress of the team is also inseparable from the foreign teacher team. "The foreign teacher team will conduct technical analysis every night for daily training, and then summarize and improve little by little, so our technical details have been greatly improved." Now for us, it's a matter of time. Yan Xingyuan said.
In terms of shooting, the shooting level of the Chinese team is also gradually improving. "Before the foreign teacher came, we only paid attention to the hit rate, and did not pay attention to details, such as entering the shooting range, shooting preparation action, and fast pedaling action out of the range." Tang Jialin said frankly, "This is where we have improved a lot this year, and the speed has also increased a lot, taking less time while maintaining precision, and closer to the international level." ”
In terms of game psychology, as a veteran of the battlefield, Bjordalen has a wealth of experience, he will be some of the experience of pre-match adjustments to the players, telling the players that the main goal of the game is to focus on their own shooting and sliding, do not be distracted by other opponents, and do their own thing.
As a physical fitness project, the physical training of the biathlon runs through the whole process of training, but the Bjordalen foreign teacher team has added special physical training on the basis of basic physical fitness. Liu Hao introduced: "For example, core strength training we have also done in the past, but one of the biggest characteristics of Jodlun training is that he requires very fine, in his opinion, physical training should be refined to the specific part of the body, which one action is slightly worse, the muscle group may be different, which is a big change." ”
In addition to physical training, in the monitoring and monitoring of some scientific and technological indicators, the Chinese biathlon team has also made great progress. In the past, the team controlled the amount of training through time and distance, but the Bjordalen foreign teacher team introduced a set of advanced European blood lactate test system to control the training intensity of the team. "Blood lactate tests, our amount is very large, estimated at least 2,000 times a year." Liu Hao said.
The "Quadruple Crown" produced Norway to regain its supremacy
The most powerful contender for gold medals at the Winter Olympics has been Norwegian athletes, but in recent years, Sweden, Germany, France and other countries have begun to attack Norway's hegemony. At the last PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Germany won 3 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronzes to rank first in the biathlon winter medal table, France ranked second with 3 gold and 2 bronzes, and Norway only won 1 gold and 3 silver. However, the Norwegian team of the Beijing Winter Olympics broke out strongly and regained its dominant position, ranking first in the medal table with a score of 6 gold, 2 silver and 6 bronze, the French team ranked second with 3 gold and 4 silver, and the Swedish team ranked third with 1 gold and 3 silver.
Johannes Tinnes Berger won gold medals in the men's 10 km sprint, men's 15 km collective departure, men's 4×7.5 km relay, mixed relay 4×6 km, and was the only "quadruple champion" at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Matt Olseb Reseland won gold in the women's 10km chase and women's 7.5km sprint in addition to the mixed relay, becoming the "Triple Crown". Together, the two scored 6 gold medals for the Norwegian team. In addition, Reseland became the first biathlon women's biathlon athlete to win medals in five different events at a single Winter Olympics.
With the outstanding performance of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Norway successfully surpassed Germany and topped the 22 gold, 17 silver, 16 bronze medals with a total of 55 medals in the Winter Olympics. Although the retirement of legendary Winter Olympic "hardware king" Martin Furcard has reduced the overall strength of the French team, the Beijing Winter Olympics Fillon Mayer has become the new core of the team. He missed the podium only once in 6 matches, winning a total of 2 gold, 3 silver and 5 medals. Sweden, which has sisters Hannah Ebery and Elvira Eberi, had high hopes ahead of the game, but the performance at the Beijing Winter Olympics was not impressive, and the women's relay was sweden's only gold medal in the biathlon of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, although the Chinese team did not achieve dazzling results in the biathlon competition, in Bjödalen's view: biathlon is the future of Ice and Snow Sports in China. Chinese athletes need to participate in more competitions to get exercised, and the next Winter Olympics is a time for players to mature. "We may not have joined the world biathlon competition in the past, but in these 4 years we have really started to join the competition. In the past, participating in the World Cup, more is the feeling of participation, in fact, the players do not necessarily have the strength to participate in the World Cup, this cycle our athletes have a certain competitiveness. Liu Hao concluded, "We also know that although the project has a breakthrough, there is still a big gap with the world level, but we have found a development direction, and we need to take every step on this basis and work for a long time." ”
Photo/ An Lingjun Wei Zheng Lu Lin photo