At the Beijing Winter Olympics, which ended last month, Jia Zongyang, a 31-year-old freestyle skiing aerial skiller, made a mistake in the final jump of the mixed team event and won a silver medal with his teammates. A few days later, in the freestyle ski men's aerial skills final, he missed the second round because of the difference.
An athlete with top strength in this event and several world cups in the World Cup once again missed the opportunity to win the Olympic gold medal.
From Vancouver to Beijing, Jia Zongyang is one of the athletes with the most participations in the Winter Olympics in China. During the preparation for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, he was accidentally injured during training, fractured his left calf with a crushing fracture, underwent three surgeries before and after, and punched 22 steel nails and two steel plates into his lower leg, which made many netizens call him "Ice Iron Man".
Jia Zongyang's most frequently mentioned sentence in the interview is, "Competitive sports are like this, very cruel." On the sports field, there are too many stories of regret, and the story that belongs to Jia Zongyang condenses the most cruel parts: four olympic games, three of which have been on the podium, but always rubbed shoulders with Olympic gold medals, again and again.
The following is Jia Zongyang's self-statement.
"Olympic games are too tired,
No time to be nervous at all."
When I was 5 years old, my dad sent me to gymnastics school, but I didn't really like gymnastics. In addition, gymnastics training is very hard, and the movement is very difficult, so after a few years, I am faced with the choice of continuing or quitting. When I was 12 years old, the gymnastics team and the ski team were doing physical training together, and I was caught by the freestyle skiing aerial skills team.
It was probably in April, and they had just returned from an international competition and were in a period of adjustment and relaxation. I thought this project was quite good, I didn't need to practice strength, I didn't need to practice various difficult moves, so I decided to transfer to this project.
After I officially started practicing, I found that it was not the same thing at all. In the summer, we do auxiliary training by the pool every day to practice the control of the snowboard. Unlike many athletes who have been exposed to skiing since childhood, it wasn't until the winter of that year, when the team took us to the snow country to train, that I was really exposed to skiing for the first time.
Jia Zongyang in training
I was so excited to see that much snow for the first time. After starting training, I tasted the pain, I found that I couldn't control the snowboard at all, the real skiing and auxiliary training are completely different things, every day fell in the woods, especially miserable.
My athletic career has been relatively smooth. At the age of 17, he won the Men's Prescribed Action Championship at the National Freestyle Skiing Aerial Skills Championship. More than a month later, he won his first world championship in the freestyle skiing aerial skills competition at the 24th Winter Universiade. I remember that I was so excited after the competition that I couldn't wait to call my family when I got back to my room.
This gold medal was a turning point for me and I was selected for the national team. In the World Cups in December 2009 and January 2010, I was in good shape and results.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the coach announced the roster before entering the Olympic Village, and I was selected, which surprised me. I was a young player and there were a lot of veterans on the team who had already made achievements, so I thought it would be great to go to the Olympics as a substitute.
In 2010, 19-year-old Jia Zongyang participated in the Olympic Games for the first time
The first time I participated in the Olympic Games, I was more of a learning mentality than nervous. Whether it is compared with the brothers in the team or the excellent players abroad, there is still a gap in the difficulty and quality of my movements. The goal that the coach set for me before the game was to "get to the final", and all that was left was to learn and adapt.
Before the game, I asked my brothers if they were so nervous that they couldn't sleep. After starting the game, I found out that there was no time to think about it. Our playing field is more than an hour's drive from the Olympic Village, or a mountain road, and it is really tiring to go back and forth every day, and I sleep very well at night.
That year I made it to the final round and finished sixth. I felt very happy because I had already accomplished my goal by reaching the final. And I'm already standing on the Olympic field, which is every athlete's dream, and I feel very honored to have this opportunity.
"The moment of a crushing fracture of the lower leg,
I thought I was done."
Between 2010 and 2014, I won several titles at the World Cup and bronze medals at the World Championships. Naturally, when it came to the Sochi Winter Olympics, I had some ideas about the results. The Sochi Winter Olympics were also the most tense and psychologically stressful of the four Winter Olympics I participated in.
Once an athlete is nervous, the muscle response becomes sluggish. When training and playing, you can feel that the body's response has become slower and less agile.
The freestyle skiing aerial skills program is an extreme sport with a very high risk factor. It's like when you're on a roller coaster, you undo your seat belt at the highest point, and people take off completely in the air, trying to figure out how to land with their feet. The moment in the air is only a few tenths of a second, most of the time you can't think of anything else, you can only deal with the action and connection, to think about how to control your body, how to make this action land with your feet.
In 2014 in Sochi, my heart was not so pure, I would have the idea of getting results, and I would think about how I would jump better. But the mistakes and tension in that final round didn't have much to do with it, it was more that I didn't control the action well enough. In the last move, the player in front of me played very well, and if I wanted to win the gold medal, I had to go to the difficulty. I didn't practice enough of that difficult action, lacked some control, and eventually made a mistake.
At the Sochi Winter Olympics, Jia Zongyang won a bronze medal
My final result in Sochi was bronze, which was already good for me at the time, and my team and I began to prepare for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
In 2015, while preparing for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, I was injured in an accident during a training session. When I first fell, I only felt a special pain, but I didn't know the specific severity.
When I arrived at the hospital, I took a film for examination and found that it was a comminuted fracture of the fibula in my left lower leg. The place of the fracture is exactly where we wear the snow and do the action force. When I heard this result, my brain went blank, and I felt that I was finished, and my career was going to end here.
I actually thought about whether to give up, because a fractured calf is really too deadly for freestyle skiing aerial skillers, and many of our movements are controlled by the legs. But the team and the coach didn't give up on me, they still wanted me to stick with it and try to find a way. The team has given me a lot of support in terms of medical and mental health, so I definitely don't want to live up to their efforts.
Through surgery, I had 22 nails and 2 steel plates in my calves. When I first finished the surgery, I didn't even have the toes. Rehabilitation exercise starts from the moving toes, first the toes can be bent at will, then the ankles can be flexibly twisted, and then can walk, run, jump, do some of the most basic movement training. It took a year and a half to finally remove 21 steel nails, return to the ski slopes, and start practicing the movements again.
Injuries, including watching my teammates get injured, are probably the most painful thing of my athletic career. Once there is a serious injury situation, your efforts, training, and breakthroughs for so many years will all be beaten back to the original form, all over again, and the recovery process will take a year to a year and a half. If you can't train for a year and a half, how many people can afford to delay?
I was back on the field in 2017, close to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. At this time, if I practice difficult movements, it may affect the performance of other movements, and there is also the possibility of being injured again. After consulting with the coach, we decided to give up the difficult action. Therefore, I have almost no psychological pressure in Pyeongchang, after all, it is more difficult to compete with the top players in terms of difficulty reserves.
Jia Zongyang at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics
When I was in Pyeongchang, I finished the last action, and the overall performance was relatively perfect, and there was also hope of winning gold. In that minute of equalization, I felt that the world was so quiet, and the audience was cheering, but I only had the sound of the wind in my ears, and I really enjoyed this state. I whispered to the coach that I would enjoy the moment and that I might never have such a quiet time again.
The final result was announced, and I was 0.46 points lower than the ukrainian who won the championship. The moment I saw the results, I still had regrets, after all, it was a little bit worse. Looking back, I thought again, isn't this just competitive sports, there are too many things you can't control, but as long as you play your own movements perfectly, there are no regrets.
"The mistake of the mixed team competition,
The most regrettable thing in my life."
After Pyeongchang, I didn't have much obsession with results and gold medals. But the 2022 Winter Olympics are held in China, and it is a great honor for an athlete to participate in the Olympic Games held on their doorstep. My idea for 2018 is that no matter what, no matter how hard I try, I must stand on the field of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The preparation for these four years has been relatively smooth overall, and the challenge may be due to age. The same is the amount of training for three days, and the team members only need one day to recover after the end, but my physical function is definitely not able to catch up with them, and it may take two days to recover. Therefore, for "elderly" athletes, a more reasonable training plan is needed to make up for the lack of physical fitness.
Compared with 10 years ago, my current experience must be more extensive, but I will also have more concerns. On the one hand, this concern can make me more aware of how to face unexpected situations, and the contingency of the aerial skills project is that any slight change, such as the wind direction and speed of the day, the thickness of the jumping snow, etc., will affect the performance of an action. With more experience in the game, you will know the details of how you should adjust the action in different situations.
On the other hand, there are more worries, and when you do the action, you will have more ideas, and sometimes it will affect the play, which is also a very normal thing.
At this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, huge windshield walls were set up on both sides of the venue to maximize the control of the influence of natural winds on the competition. In this case, the athlete's control over the action will be higher, the psychological pressure of the athlete and the coach will be less, and they will be more afraid to do difficult actions. So our competition this year, the viewing is particularly good.
Mixed team competitions are a new sport added to this Winter Olympics, and everyone is eager to prove themselves in this project. The moment I made a mistake in the final, I was really confused, my brain was blank, there was no way to describe that feeling in words, but this moment I would really remember for a lifetime.
I used the bFdFF action for that jump, and the success rate in training was very high, and it could be seven or eight out of ten, but it was a mistake in the game. After the end, I couldn't help but cry, thinking that the team was going to pay for my mistake alone.
Many people will wonder why a move with such a high success rate usually makes mistakes in the game. It is true that I did not jump well, nor did I not control it well, nor did I misjudge the situation on the spot. Everything that should be practiced has been practiced, everything that should be done has been done, nothing is wrong, but it is a failure, it may be that I want to jump well. That game was over and I really didn't want to think back to that moment.
For me, the mistakes in this game are the most regrettable thing for me, because of the personal reasons that drag down the team. Other times, there may be a slight misstep, maybe there are times when the performance is not good enough, but I rarely have regrets and remorse.
Overall, my athletic career has been very successful. He participated in four Olympic Games, three of which won medals. Although it has always rubbed shoulders with the gold medal, competitive sports are so cruel, there are successes and failures. When you succeed, everyone will come to pay attention to you, but the failed athletes, we are also very hard.
If I hesitated and conservatively on the field, did not do what I thought, did not play the rhythm and movement technique of training, then I would regret and feel bad. But if I play it all, no matter what the final result is, I will not regret it.
Every athlete wants to win a gold medal, especially an Olympic gold medal. But there are too many athletes in this world who have not won a gold medal, so can we say that they don't work hard? The Olympic gold medal pays attention to the favorable time and place, and it is not the athletes who have the final say, nor are they useful after hard work.
As long as you don't regret it, it's a success.
Edit: Echo
Image source Visual China