She has achieved 30 doubles championships and 6 singles championships in various international competitions, and has won two consecutive Olympic championships to create a myth in the table tennis world, which has shocked the world.
Playing on the field, she always showed herself with a clean short haircut, coupled with a fast and fierce style, and the fans gave her the title of "tomboy".
Winning the 2012 London Olympics is undoubtedly another high point in Guo Yue's career, when she was only 24 years old, which was the golden age of a table tennis player.
Just when everyone thought she would soar in the future, she suddenly chose to retire and disappeared from the game.
1, the famous general "early retirement", the decommissioning storm behind it
At the age of 12, Guo Yue was invited to participate in the Asian Invitational and win the international competition, when an Italian journalist at the scene once boldly predicted: "This little girl will definitely become the champion of world-class competitions in the future." ”
Sure enough, just one year later she won the ITTF Professional Tour Finals.
After winning the championship, Guo Yue inadvertently broke another record and became the youngest major champion in the history of Chinese table tennis.
She is extremely talented, trained hard, and has no shortcomings in technique and tactics.
If nothing else, she will become a new monument in China's women's table tennis industry in the future, along with Deng Yaping, Zhang Yining and others.
However, with the announcement of his retirement in 2014, Guo Yue's athletic career came to an abrupt end.
In January of that year, the women's table tennis national team suddenly issued a statement, Guo Yue due to personal reasons, did not have the opportunity to stay in the team regrettably withdrew.
After the announcement was released, it caused an uproar on the Internet in an instant.
Under normal circumstances, table tennis players retire between the age of 30 and 35, while this year's Guo Yue is only 26 years old, from the perspective of age, far from reaching the point of retirement.
Li Wujun, a well-known table tennis reporter of CCTV, once left a message on the social platform account, "It is really a thunderbolt in the sky." ”
After Guo Yue withdrew from the team, all kinds of rumors and speculations flew all over the world for a while, and in just a few months, this incident was full of storms.
In fact, from the follow-up interviews of Guo Yue and coach Liu Guoliang, the reason for Guo Yue's departure from the team is not complicated, and the main reason is the injury problem over the years.
Guo Yue has been in the team for fourteen years, maintaining high-intensity training all year round, which has kept her cervical spine under high load and suffered from serious waist injuries.
By around 2014, the pain had reached such an extreme point that even the spinal nerves had been compressed.
In the usual training, as long as the time is long, Guo Yue's entire arm will be stiff and numb, unable to move.
Guo Yue is not unable to compete, but every time he plays, he will suffer tremendous pain and it is difficult to maintain stability.
The physical pain is secondary, and more importantly, the injury is a psychological torture for Guo Yue.
Guo Yue is a well-known "genius girl" and a favorite to win various competitions. For many years, she had been carrying the hope of winning the championship, and her whole person was like a tight string, and now that her body was in trouble, her thinking had quietly changed, and she began to become afraid of competition, and even unable to train for play.
The training of the national team is extremely strict, and any drop in the team will cause a decline in the level, at this time Guo Yue is obviously unable to adapt, and finally, after a fierce inner struggle, coach Liu Guoliang had to make up his mind to dismiss him.
Coach Kong Linghui also once regretted that "now Guo Yue's daily training can not keep up, the 16-year Rio Olympic cycle is catching up with it, her current state is unfavorable to the morale and atmosphere of the entire team, and the door of the national team will not be closed to Guo Yue, but now she should really slow down." ”
More than two months after leaving the national team, the Liaoning Table Tennis Association held an Olympic champion campus tour, and Guo Yue reappeared, much thinner than before.
On that day, she was actually sick, but she still interacted with the students enthusiastically, and taught her playing skills by example, meeting the children's requirements for playing, autographing, and taking photos one by one, and not forgetting to tell them to "pay attention to safety".
She herself was also interviewed, and when talking about her physical condition, she was very optimistic: "There will inevitably be difficulties and setbacks on the road of life, but as long as you continue to sum up experience, tap your potential, and improve yourself, you will definitely become a strong person." Not being in the national team, that reality made me mature. I am eager to get out of the trough as soon as possible through my own efforts and return to the national team. ”
It is not difficult to see from this that Guo Yue's withdrawal from the team is more of an involuntariness.
2. A long way to learn and start a new life
After retiring from the national team, Guo Yue was relegated to the provincial team, while continuing to train and observing whether he could recover.
Unfortunately, this time, fate did not take care of her.
In the days of local team training, Guo Yue's physical condition has not improved, coupled with the poor training intensity of the local team, the level has still declined rapidly.
Seeing that he could not return to the arena, Guo Yue finally announced his retirement that year, completely bidding farewell to the arena for which he dedicated his life.
On December 6 of that year, Guo Yue was invited by the Liaoning Provincial Women's Table Tennis Team to be named the coach of the provincial team.
Compared with professional athletes, the identity of coach has a lot more free time. In the process, she also began to look for a new path in life, that is, to enter the university.
Guo Yue has served in the national team since middle school, which has kept her cultural classes in a "semi-wasted state" for many years, and it is not an easy task to start from scratch in her twenties.
Usually, as Guo Yue's Olympic champion, it is easy to apply for an admission letter from a well-known sports college in China.
However, she did not do this, but decided to strive for a degree of her own through her own efforts.
At that time, she chose to major in finance and finance, and in her daily life, she seized all her free time, and when she had the opportunity, she would sit in the stadium with professional books and read hard, and successfully passed the exam in just one year.
On July 22, 2015, Guo Yue officially announced on his social media that he had received an MBA in Finance from Tsinghua University-Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Coincidentally, this day happened to be Guo Yue's 27th birthday, which seemed to indicate that she was about to start a new life.
Knowing this news, her teammates and coaches have given their blessings, and the women's team coach Kong Linghui said excitedly in an interview: "Guo Yue can walk into the university door, which is mainly due to her awareness of taking the initiative to study and improve, she can become an excellent athlete, and I believe that she can naturally become a good student who has achieved academic success." This remark can be said to be the best footnote to Guo Yue's life.
As early as the training of the national team, more than one coach has said: Guo Yue has a kind of "resilience", she has a great desire to win, and is willing to suffer.
It is no exaggeration to say that if Guo Yue is placed in any field, she will not do too badly.
In September of the same year, Guo Yue officially enrolled in school, and judging from the photos of this period, she had extremely rare long hair, and the photos of her beautiful appearance and fashionable clothing made it difficult to associate with the "false boy" on the former arena.
Live and fall into a "goddess", and because of this, some netizens said that it has experienced "secondary development".
In the days of college, Guo Yue still maintained the attitude of the past on the field, although he started late, but his results have been very good, and he has completed the transformation of his identity with his own efforts.
In the following days, she was admitted to graduate school and master's degree, and after graduation, she joined a famous banking regulatory institution and started a new life.
From Olympic athletes to urban white-collar workers, Guo Yue has no shortage of courage to retreat from the rapids, and there is no lack of vigor to start from scratch, and this is the key to her success.
3. "Entertainment Sports" tri-amphibious players
Time to 2022, Guo Yue is now 34 years old.
Now she has a stable job and has met a boyfriend who is also a graduate student.
Although she has long left the arena, Guo Yue has not left the public eye, and in recent years, she has participated in variety shows many times, appearing in Hunan Satellite TV's "My Girl's Girl" and CCTV's "Avenue of Stars".
On the stage, Guo Yue has a dignified temperament, talks softly, and there is no longer the sharpness of the former "tomboy" in his eyes, but more of a hint of maturity.
Guo Yue is not currently married to his boyfriend, and when talking about his marriage problems, he said: "I am still relatively young and do not want to get married too early. I think young people should do a good job first, get married two or three years later, there is no problem. ”
Although he bid farewell to the arena, Guo Yue has not stopped paying attention to the cause of table tennis for many years.
In 2021, Liu Shiwen lost the gold medal because she lost in the mixed doubles competition, and was deeply under the pressure of public opinion, and Guo Yue, as a senior, encouraged and comforted her.
Guo Yue was originally from Liaoning, but now he has settled in Beijing for work, and in his daily life, Guo Yue has also opened a personal social account and often shares some photos of his daily life.
Now that Guo Yue's physical condition has basically recovered, although she has no chance to return to the arena again, with the help of the Douyin platform, she has also begun to serve as a "voluntary coach" for the majority of netizens and shoot various table tennis tutorials.
Guo Yue is experienced and technically excellent, and is still an Olympic champion, perhaps it is not realistic for her to return to the arena at this time, but it is more than enough to give technical and tactical guidance to netizens.
Because of this, Guo Yue's social accounts have accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans so far.
Although her main business is table tennis, on weekdays, Guo Yue is involved in many other sports, she is good at swimming, golfing, and occasionally rock climbing.
She also kept her weight at a healthy level, even losing several pounds compared to her previous military service.
In addition to former table tennis players and finance, she has also hidden a trend towards the entertainment industry through several variety shows.
On January 8, 2022, Guo Yue was invited by Deling Magazine to take a set of fashion photos, in which she had a heroic mid-length hair and a good figure, no less than a first-line actress, which was impressive.
It just so happens that Guo Yue has loved singing and dancing since he was a child, and now he can get such an opportunity, which may be a dream of his own.
As an athlete, her career is certainly full of regrets, and quitting in the golden stage because of injuries is the biggest blow for professional athletes.
However, Guo Yue's life is not lucky, when she was still young, she got the opportunity to "change careers", which also gave her the opportunity to run on other tracks, and also laid the groundwork for her to achieve greater achievements.
It seems that for athlete Guo Yue, the climax of life is always ahead.
Bibliography:
1. "Ding Ning Transforms into "Learning Ning" Learning the Sea Without End to Continue to Cheer" Yangcheng Evening News
2. "Tokyo Olympic Games are about to open, many athletes in Hebei are pointing to gold medals" China News Network
3. "Guo Yue: Life inevitably has ups and downs" City Evening News
4. "Jump over 24 years old, jump to London!" Shenyang Evening News