China's first Olympic springboard diving champion, do you know who she is? The world's first female diver to break the 600-point diving mark, do you know who she is? The athlete who once monopolized the world jumping world for seven years, the "lonely and defeated" of the diving industry, and created the "myth" of the Asian Games, the World University Games, the Diving World Cup, the World Swimming Championships, and the Olympic Springboard Diving Competition, do you know who she is? Her technical difficulty and stability have far outpaced any opponent, making opponents feel desperate, making her contemporaries a sad one, you know, who she is?
That's right, she is a generation of diving empress Gao Min. Gao Min was born in 1970 in Zigong City, Sichuan Province. At the age of 4, Gao Min began practicing swimming and received diving training at the age of 9. A year later, at the age of 10, she was selected for the Sichuan Provincial Diving Team.
1983 was a memorable year for Gao Min, in this year. The National Diving Championships happened to be held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and Gao Min became a big dark horse, unexpectedly winning the national championship, becoming the youngest national champion in China's history at that time. In the same year, at the age of thirteen, Gao Min participated in the world-class age-sharing swimming championships for the first time, and the results were a huge success, and she alone won two diving championships in her age group.
Gao Min's victory brings great expectations to everyone. But sometimes fate is a joke, and the next two things have brought a heavy blow to Gao Min. The Fifth National Games in 1983 was held in Shanghai, but Gao Min, who had high hopes, failed to meet the standards and lost a mess. In the next competition, she fell from the 10-meter platform, bleeding from her lungs, and she almost felt the call of death to her. But Gao Min is Gao Min, she is born with a stubbornness in her bones, and she never accepts the blood flowing. After a struggle with death, she came back.
In 1985, at the age of fifteen, Gao Min was selected for the national team. The national team and the provincial team are not the same, here, it is a wealth of talents, everyone is selected from the provincial teams to select the seed players and elites. Compared with other athletes, Gao Min not only has no advantages to speak of, but also finds that his level is even worse than others. I must catch up, and I must not lag behind them. Only by practicing hard can you catch up. In this way, Gao Min arrived at the training site 10 minutes earlier every day, while reducing the preparation time by 10 minutes, so that he could practice 20 minutes more than others every day. Soon, she caught up and became one of the most valued generals in the national team.
Soon, Gao Min had the opportunity to prove himself. In August 1986, the 5th World Aquatics Championships were held in Madrid, Spain, and Gao Min won the women's 3m springboard diving world championship with a record score of 582.42 points. In 1987, the World Cup in the Netherlands, Gao Min was unfavorable, and in pre-match training, his arm was fractured and he also had a high fever. In this adversity, she burst out of great energy and won the World Cup again.
In 1988, the 24th Olympic Games were held in Seoul, South Korea, and the 18-year-old Gao Min represented the Chinese team in the Olympic Games, and she went all the way through the barriers, and finally won the Olympic championship at a super high level and in a desperate way that made her opponents desperate. In this way, she also became the first "Grand Slam winner" of the Chinese diving team to combine world championships, World Cup and Olympic champions.
Since then, Gao Min's diving career has been fully opened and hung, all the way to the red. In 1987, 1988 and 1989, Gao Min was named the world's best diver of the year by swimming world magazine for three consecutive years.
Opponents once said of Gao Min: "As a diver, it is a sad thing to be in the same era as Gao Min, as long as she participates in the competition, we will never want to win the championship." ”
In 1992, Gao Min once again represented the Chinese team in the Barcelona Olympic Games, this time with the only goal of defending the Olympic champion. In order to reduce her stress, she wrote in her diary: "It does not matter whether the game is won or lost, it is best not to make mistakes, and you should sleep at night with confidence."
But in the preliminary stage, after Gao Min jumped two movements, her body began to stiffen. When jumping to the fourth action, the shoulder began to hurt, and it was getting more and more painful, and when the fifth jump was too painful because the shoulder was too painful, it was impossible to do the technique, and when we jumped together, the body stopped in the air. Gao Min was lying in the water, almost without swimming, he was washed away by the water to the edge of the pool, and in the sixth action, Gao Min jumped into the water without understanding what was going on. After the end of the preliminaries, Gao Min was in third place, and she was in a hurry, afraid of the same mistakes in the final, and also worried about whether her shoulders could persist until the final. In the night before the final, the pressure was so intense that Gao Min thought of committing suicide that night, but after several hesitations, she held the pills in her hand for a night and did not eat them.
Before the final, Coach Xu Yiming said to Gao Min: "The level of world-class opponents is close, as long as you don't make mistakes, there is no problem in defeating them." ”
The finals have begun. In the first five jumps, Gao Min temporarily ranked second, 5.64 points behind the first diving star Rashko. The sixth jump, the seventh jump, Gao Min is the more jump the better. On the other hand, the opponent is constantly making mistakes. After the seventh jump, Gao Min rose to the first place. At this point, the game has lost its suspense. In the end, Gao Min won her second Olympic gold medal with a high score of 572.4, 58.26 points ahead of Rashko, and became the first Chinese female athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. This Olympic gold medal is also the last gold medal of Gao Min's diving career.
After the end of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Gao Min announced his retirement, ending the "Gao Min era of a generation of diving queens". Since 1986, Gao Min has created a 7-year"Gao Min Era", maintaining complete victories in all the major events she has participated in, winning more than 70 gold medals in international competitions, 11 world championships, and two Olympic champions, with numerous honors.
Gao Min's sports career is undoubtedly brilliant and incomparably brilliant, and what she presents to the audience is her highest moment. Success is a mirror, we must not only see the bright surface, but also see the side behind the mirror. On that side, it is the perseverance of her diving career for 14 years, the countless days and nights of fighting with injuries, and the strongest voice she makes for her dreams.