On June 5, Beijing time, at the FINA Congress held in Doha, Zhou Jihong was elected vice president of FINA. As a result, she became the first female vice president in FINA's history.
At present, Zhou Jihong is also the deputy director of the Swimming Center, the chairman of the Chinese Swimming Association, the chairman of the Chinese Diving Association, and the leader of the Chinese diving team. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic diving champion is now the talker of Chinese swimming and diving circles.
She has never served as the head coach of the Chinese diving team, but she has always exercised the rights of head coach. Her disciples have won the Olympic championship and the world championship, but she has never lacked controversy. The contradiction with Tian Liang, as well as the later "bonus gate" and "inner fixed door" made her have a mixed reputation.
When I was a diving reporter, I dealt with her for many years and interviewed her many times. In recent years, after staying away from the diving line, there is a lack of understanding of her changes and growth, so she also interviewed a friend who had a personal relationship with her (the person chose to be anonymous, hereinafter referred to as the "insider"), hoping to outline a more three-dimensional Zhou Jihong from a few details.
"Business is the focus of my life"
Shortly after I entered the industry, I heard a passage related to Zhou Jihong. An authoritative media outlet (forgive me for not being able to name it) once had a special reporter who had just taken over the diving project. She went to the Chinese diving team for the first time to interview, had a cordial exchange with Zhou Jihong, and hoped to cooperate more closely with the other party after reporting home.
The two sides had their first intimate contact in a friendly atmosphere. However, at the end of the interview, the reporter may have asked the other party a question in order to close the relationship with Zhou Jihong - "Leader, what project were you working on before?" ”
In each national team, the status of the team leader is relatively special, belonging to the administrative position, and many team leaders are not even athletes. In other sports teams, this question is not abrupt, but it is nonsense to ask China's first diving Olympic gold medalist with this question. The prospect of this reporter interviewing diving can be imagined. It didn't take long for the media to replace the diving reporter.
For this anecdotal passage, I have not asked the parties concerned, but I have also personally experienced Zhou Jihong's strictness on business. If the reporter makes a business mistake when asking a question, it will definitely be corrected by Zhou Jihong on the spot, and this correction is an instinctive reaction.
107B ((Forward Churning Forward For Three and a Half Weeks)) This action was once Guo Jingjing's nightmare, and Wu Minxia also jumped over zero points in this action. For diving journalists, it is more common to say the wrong diving action code, and sometimes it is unintentional, but the result must be ruthlessly corrected. A peer once described this action as 107C (churning forward for three and a half weeks to hold the knee), and Zhou Jihong blurted out "107B" for the first time. A similar scenario has happened more than once in my diving journalist career.
I also had the experience of being corrected on the spot by her. At the 2010 Diving World Cup in Changzhou, the Ukrainian duo of Kovasha/Prigrove caused a lot of trouble for the Chinese team in the men's three-meter board double event. In an interview with Zhou Jihong two years later, I mistakenly wrote the Ukrainian combination as a Russian combination, which was also corrected by Zhou Jihong on the spot.
"She (Zhou Jihong) is an extremely dedicated person. Until the end of 2019, she was basically in the team until 7 or 8 o'clock every night. During the epidemic last year, she was unwell, coupled with more administrative work, and she was no longer as close as before, but her main energy was still on the diving side. She is really energetic and has to be admired. Insiders commented on Zhou Jihong. She also once told me: "Business is the focus of my life".
Taboo and offense
Zhou Jihong has never lacked controversy. When I first came into the diving project in 2006, the smoke of the war between her and Tian Liang had not yet dissipated. At that time, she was a very difficult interviewee. I have also experienced many phone interviews that she bluntly refused on the grounds of "driving" and "meeting".
At the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese diving team only missed the men's ten-meter platform to achieve the gold medal. But behind the great success, the dispute surrounding her has never stopped. Yu Fen, the former deputy head coach of the diving team, reported that Zhou Jihong embezzled the prize money, which became a hot spot in public opinion that year.
At the 2009 National Games, the gold medal of diving project "Inner Dingmen" broke out, once again pushing Zhou Jihong to the cusp of public opinion. "Which unit are you from?" It became a popular buzzword that year. The female journalist she questioned was my former colleague (I was absent from the diving event because of my personal affair).
Under the huge whirlpool of public opinion, "Tian Liang" and "Yu Fen" have become taboos for Zhou Jihong. In early 2008, when Yu Fen was clamoring to return to the national team, all reporters wanted to know Zhou Jihong's attitude, but no one dared to ask at the launch of the Diving World Cup. The reporter of Wen Wei Po solved the urgent needs of his peers, and he threw such a question to Zhou Jihong at the press conference - "At this stage, does the national diving team have a plan to adjust the coach?" This question is very clever, the peers will smile, Zhou Jihong also smiled, and immediately understood the deep meaning behind the question. Neither the reporter nor Zhou Jihong mentioned Yu Fen's name, but closed the door to Fen's return to the national team. This was one of the incentives for Yu Fen to later report Zhou Jihong's embezzlement of the bonus.
Zhou Jihong also has a taboo, that is, "losing gold". In her opinion, the gold medal has never belonged to the Chinese team naturally, so why "lose gold". I once inadvertently mentioned the two words "lost gold" in an interview, and Zhou Jihong did not explicitly state that the predecessors around me corrected me, "You can't say lost gold in front of the Zhou leader."
Zhou Jihong's taboos are not red lines that cannot be crossed. Before the London Olympic Games, when I interviewed Zhou Jihong in Jinan, I took the initiative to ask about the "bonus door" and "inner fixed door". Zhou Jihong's answer was also more frank, saying that it was impossible not to mind at that time, and people always had times to be wronged, "but it is still necessary to face it in stages, look back and think about it, in fact, there is nothing to mind." ”
When some portals reprinted this interview, they typed a sensational headline - "Bonus Gate" and "Inner Fixed Door" actually mindfully" This misinterprets Zhou Jihong's original meaning and is taken out of context. For this sensational headline, Zhou Jihong really did not mind and did not accuse me of it.
During that interview, Zhou Jihong admitted that she would make people feel that they were not easy to contact, "I am not very polite or gentle to refuse, more direct." Sometimes, people's psychology is very uncomfortable, and it is inevitable that they feel that I am relatively hard and difficult to contact. However, from 2012, she gradually began to try to change.
Insiders told me that today's Zhou Jihong is more mature, and she will not care about the "loss of gold" and the like, "It may be that the pressure is relatively large around 08, and now it is much better." She is also constantly maturing and growing. During the epidemic last year, reporters could not go to the diving hall to interview, Zhou Jihong cameo reporters to ask questions to the athletes, which made the team members look confused and surprised the diving reporters.
Iron fist is also tender
Zhou Jihong also has a nickname - "Iron Lady". For this title, she herself is not cold, "This is the positioning you (the media) gave me, I can't position myself." ”
However, for so many years, she has been an iron fist to the Chinese diving team. Insiders told me that Zhou Jihong is very strict in the implementation of team rules, and once the team rules are violated, no matter how big or small the wrists are, they are treated equally. From the time I started diving, the team members were not allowed to give interviews to the media privately, and the coaches were no different.
At the Incheon Asian Games, I made an exclusive interview with Wu Minxia through Zhou Jihong. When I found Wu Minxia in the stands, she was dazed and said that she could not accept an interview without the permission of the tour leader. It wasn't until she saw the text message sent to me by Zhou Jihong that she gladly accepted the interview.
Zhou Jihong also has a tender side behind the rule of the army. Insiders revealed that before each Olympic Games, she will choose some gifts with beautiful meanings for the team members. Before the Beijing Olympics, she gave her team members a necklace of pure gold. "The necklace was an Olympic licensed commodity, and she bought it at her own expense." Insiders said. During the Rio Olympics, she pulled all the participants into a WeChat group, and the group name was "Children". Insiders believe that this group name reflects her unique feelings for her disciples.
In terms of the logistics support of the team, Zhou Jihong also personally did it. Not long ago, after the team members participated in the diving championships and Olympic trials held in Shanghai, they will usher in a short holiday. "Zhou Jihong followed up the team's itinerary in great detail, including where to go on vacation, when to return to Beijing, and which flight to take, and specially made a table." Insiders said.
The dilemma of commercialization
Under the rule of Zhou Jihong, the Chinese diving team has produced countless Olympic champions and world champions, but there have been no phenomenon-level sports stars after Tian Liang and Guo Jingjing. In recent years, the diving team's performance has not declined, but the exposure and influence are not as good as that year.
On the Olympic results, Chen Ruolin has won the gold medals of the women's jump single and double in the two consecutive Olympic Games, and her achievements are not lost to Guo Jingjing. Her image and temperament are also quite good, but she has never approached the position of "first sister". In this regard, Zhou Jihong also felt helpless, and could only sigh: "The times create people, this is what it looks like." ”
The lack of stars also hindered the commercial development of the diving project. In the view of insiders, the commercialization of The Chinese diving team is not low, and there is no lack of brand sponsorship, but the commercialization of the sport of diving is difficult to achieve a soaring due to multiple factors.
Zhou Jihong is more concerned about the commercial operation of the Chinese diving team. The team has long implemented flat management and commercial packaging with a holistic image. In Zhou Jihong's consciousness, as long as the results are good, there will be no shortage of sponsors. But her personal mindset, knowledge structure, and lack of a professional team, coupled with the limitations of the diving project and the factors of the social environment, make the project difficult to break in terms of commercialization. This is not a dilemma unique to diving, many Olympic sports face a similar situation. The insider said.
As vice president of FINA, president of the Chinese Swimming Association, and president of the China Diving Association, Zhou Jihong led the team to complete the Olympic games, and it is also an unshirkable burden to promote the commercialization process of swimming and diving.