Deep|New measures of the National Games! Zou Jingyuan is expected to win the "king of kings" and overcome the phenomenon of "weak legs" of female generals

After 3 years, gymnastics monographers will have the opportunity to challenge for the throne of kings! The General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China recently released the "Small Setting of Competitive Events of the 15th Games of the People's Republic of China", showing that the men's senior group will add pommel horse ring parallel bars all-around, and the women's junior age group will add vault uneven bars balance beam all-around. Obviously, this is a major overhaul of the gymnastics competition at the National Games.

The first National Games had gymnastics competitions, and the previous 13 National Games had 14 events, namely: men's team, individual all-around, floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, horizontal bar and women's team, individual all-around, vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise, and the setting events are exactly the same as the Olympic Gymnastics World Championships and Gymnastics World Championships.

At the 14th National Games held in Shaanxi in 2021, the gymnastics competition added team competitions for the first time in the men's junior age group (15-17 years old) and the women's junior age group (13-15 years old). Compared with the last National Games, the 15th National Games to be held in 2025 will be more vigorously reformed: first, the small age group will be increased from 2 to 5 sub-events, and the other is to add two "special" all-around events in the adult group and the small age group.

"Special" omnipotence is the author's definition based on history. Those who have an understanding of gymnastics should know that the gymnastics all-around competition has men's individual all-around, women's individual all-around biathlon, men's individual all-around includes floor exercise, pommel horse, ring, vault, parallel bars, horizontal bar, women's individual all-around includes vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise. These two events reflect the comprehensive strength of a gymnast, and the winner is called the "king of kings" of gymnastics. In the past, Chinese players Li Ning, Li Xiaoshuang, Feng Jing, Yang Wei and Xiao Ruoteng have won the title of men's "king of kings" in the three major world competitions. Chinese female gymnasts have not yet won this honor, mainly because of the obvious gap between vault and floor exercise and world-class athletes.

Thirty years ago, the National Games were moved from the previous year before the Olympic Games to the year after the Olympic Games, and this change formed a reasonable situation in which the National Games, Asian Games and Olympic Games were held successively in the Olympic cycle. As the Olympic training ground, the setting of the National Games events revolves around the "Olympic Glory Plan", which is why the National Games football, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and other events have added small age groups, and the next National Games gymnastics competition will add "special" all-around events.

The author learned that the "special" all-around project set up by the 15th Games aims to point out a direction for the national gymnastics training work in the next few years, further stimulate the training enthusiasm of young athletes, and ultimately aim to reserve better and more outstanding talents for the Chinese gymnastics team.

Based on the small composition of the two "special" all-around events, it is not difficult to infer the good intentions of China's sports decision-makers.

The author believes that the setting of the women's junior group vault uneven bar balance beam all-around aims to improve the competitiveness of Chinese female gymnasts in the leg event.

For a long time, Chinese women's gymnastics has the problem of strong uneven bars and balance beam, and weak vault and balance beam, compared with the weaker competitiveness of vault, this phenomenon has led to the Chinese women's gymnastics team in the team and individual all-around two events in the past few highlights, more than 40 years of this team's world championships, most of the honors achieved in the uneven bars, balance beam two events.

At last year's Gymnastics World Championships, the Chinese women's gymnastics team showed a first-class strong team style in the uneven bars and balance beam, but the women's team and individual all-around only won the 6th and 7th places respectively, and the women's team final fully exposed the weakness of the Chinese women's "weak legs", when the total score of vault and floor exercise was 1.5 points to nearly 3 points worse than that of the top 3 teams. It is worth mentioning that the strength of the neighboring Japanese team has improved significantly in recent years, and last year's World Championships team final vault and floor exercise scored more than 1.8 points and 2.6 points higher than the Chinese team, respectively, and the rise of the Japanese team overturned the theory of racial differences that had existed in the domestic gymnastics industry for a long time.

The 15th Olympics added vault uneven bars balance beam all-around to the women's junior age group, aiming to enhance the enthusiasm of athletes to overcome vault fortresses through this new initiative, and hope to improve the competitiveness of the Chinese women's team in the three events of team, individual all-around and vault at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games through the improvement of vault strength.

The situation of Chinese men's gymnastics is different from that of women, and the setting of the men's senior group pommel horse ring parallel bars all-around is mainly to improve the enthusiasm of single-athlete to try multiple events, form a single-athlete with three or four strength reserves capable of winning high-scoring events, and provide more favorable conditions for the Chinese men's gymnastics team to prepare for team events.

According to the current situation, the new initiative of the men's event of gymnastics at the National Games may allow the "parallel bars king" Zou Jingyuan to realize the dream of the all-around champion of the National Games. Since 2017, Zou Jingyuan has been the best parallel bars athlete in the international gymnastics industry, winning the Olympic and World Championships parallel bars championships four times, and his winning score is often more than 0.5 points higher than that of the runner-up, and his performance on the bar is praised as "textbook moves" by the international gymnastics community. What is remarkable is that Zou Jingyuan's rings and pommel horse strength are also good, especially his second strong ring, which has the world's top three strengths, won the runner-up at last year's World Championships, and also contributed an original move named after himself.

Due to injuries sustained during his early training, Zou Jingyuan was unable to try training in 6 sports, but his competitiveness in many individual disciplines showed his extraordinary gymnastics talent, as well as his pursuit and dedication to the gymnastics career. The addition of the Kurama parallel bars horizontal bar all-around at the 15th Games will be an incentive for Zou Jingyuan, and it will also point out a direction for other single-sport masters: if you practice three or four events, you will also have the ability to impact the "king of kings" of the National Games. (Wang Quanli)