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"Get up, people who don't want to be slaves..."
On November 23, 2005, a 17-year-old girl leaped onto the podium at the World Gymnastics Championships in Australia, accompanied by the solemn national anthem of the People's Republic of China. Looking at the rising five-star red flag, the corners of her eyes moistened.
This girl is the "Queen of Gymnastics" Cheng Fei, who won the world championship in vault with a high score of 9.656. With a "Cheng Fei jump", she not only easily defeated her opponent, but also refreshed the history of Chinese gymnastics.
Later, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she led the Chinese women's gymnastics team to win three gold medals, setting the best performance in Chinese gymnastics.
However, due to injuries, at the age of 25, she had to regrettably retire and transition to coaching.
Her father once said publicly, "Now I don't pursue what kind of achievements she has, I only hope that she can be an ordinary person, be able to marry a good family, and live a stable life." ”
So, what kind of story happened to her? What is Cheng Fei doing after retiring? Why did her father make that assessment? Has she really found true love again?
Sickly young children, gymnastics
On May 29, 1988, in Huangshi City, Hubei Province, a baby girl came to this world with the ardent expectations of her whole family. And this infant sleeping in his infancy is Cheng Fei.
Like the vast majority of ordinary people, Cheng Fei was born in a very ordinary family, her father Cheng Ligao is a worker in a local auto repair shop, and her mother Xu Chunxiang is an ordinary worker in a tire factory, in the social background at that time, the monthly salary of the two was less than 1,000 yuan, the house was only more than 30 square meters, and life can be said to be very tight.
Cheng Fei's arrival made this small family, which was not rich, more nervous, but this was not the biggest headache for Cheng Ligao, Cheng Fei's physical problems were the most concerned about Cheng Ligao.
When he was a child, Cheng Fei's physical condition was very bad, and he had to run to the hospital in three days, and in the face of such a situation, Cheng Ligao looked at it in his eyes and was anxious in his heart. When he heard the news that Deng Yaping had won the World View Table Tennis Championship, suddenly, an idea jumped into his mind.
"Yes, why can't I send Cheng Fei to play table tennis? It's better to be a table tennis player, and even if it's not good, she can strengthen her body through sports. Cheng Ligao thought.
Cheng Ligao originally studied martial arts for seven years and used to be a martial arts athlete, but because life forced him to give up the career he loved, therefore, in his heart, he also very much hopes that his daughter can embark on the road of sports.
In this way, Cheng Fei, who was only four years old, was sent by his father to Huangshi Amateur Sports School to learn to play table tennis.
Maybe Cheng Fei was not born with table tennis materials, and after practicing table tennis in a sports school for a period of time, she never found the essentials of this sport, and her grades dropped again and again. At the same time, her physical condition has not changed because of playing table tennis, which makes Cheng Ligao's heart very anxious.
But there is no way to go, and a phone call "saved" Cheng Fei's sports life.
The person who called was Coach Ke Jin, who was teaching gymnastics at the amateur gymnastics school at that time, it turned out that he noticed Cheng Fei and found that her physical condition was very suitable for practicing gymnastics, so he became passionate about talent, so he communicated with Cheng Ligao, hoping that Cheng Fei could change gymnastics.
At this moment, Cheng Ligao was worried about his daughter's affairs, and when he heard such news, he hurriedly agreed.
Cheng Fei, who was only four years old, formed an inseparable fate with gymnastics for a lifetime.
After hardships, we finally succeeded
However, if a person wants to achieve something, he must go through a lot of hardships, and even if Cheng Fei later became a world champion, she inevitably experienced many ups and downs in her growth experience.
If you want to really practice gymnastics well, the first difficulty in front of Cheng Fei is her feet.
It turned out that Cheng Fei walked with a genetic "outer eight characters", which is very deadly for a gymnast, if she cannot overcome this problem, then her gymnastics road is doomed to not go long.
Therefore, Cheng Fei was required by the coach to walk on tiptoe, so as to gradually improve her problem of foreign figures. You know, this is not easy for adults, and Cheng Fei was only a four-year-old child at that time.
In addition to tiptoeing, in order to cure her problem, Cheng Ligao even found a white cloth several feet long, and whenever Cheng Fei was ready to sleep at night, he would wrap her legs in white cloth to set her shape.
It is the age of lively and active, not to mention hard training during the day, not to mention, even sleeping at night can not be free, Cheng Fei also cried and said to his parents:
"I don't want to practice gymnastics!"
However, for the sake of his daughter's future, Cheng Ligao still gritted his teeth and tied her legs.
In this way, a few months later, Cheng Fei's "outer eight characters" problem was corrected, and she had a perfect body.
As Cheng Fei grew older, when she was seven years old, her father sent her to the Wuhan Sports Institute for more formal training. However, a new problem arose before the family.
It turned out that children like Cheng Fei who wanted to study and train in an institution like Wuhan Sports Institute needed to pay a fee of one thousand yuan to the school every semester, which was undoubtedly a huge number for Cheng Fei's family conditions.
The young but very sensible Cheng Fei even thought of giving up, but her parents did not want to see their daughter give up halfway because of financial problems after paying so much hard work, and they even started a "side business", knitting gloves after work to sell them, and saving money little by little to save up for Cheng Fei's tuition.
Later, just like Maxima met Bo Le, when coach Zhao Hanhua of Wuhan Sports Institute learned about Cheng Fei's family situation, he immediately reported the situation to the school leaders.
"Cheng Fei is a rare good seedling for practicing gymnastics, it is too regrettable to give up because of family reasons, I hope that the college leaders can give her the treatment of formal gymnastics students."
The school also approved the report immediately after learning about the situation. In this way, Cheng Fei, who was only 8 years old, became a formal sports college student, not only did not have to worry about tuition fees, but even received a living allowance every month.
She trained harder!
In 2001, he entered the national gymnastics team with excellent results.
Years of hard training have made Cheng Fei's skills more proficient and his results more stable. Finally, at the 2004 Athens Olympics, she waited for her chance to make a splash.
Because a member of the national gymnastics team was accidentally injured during training, Cheng Fei, who was originally a substitute, represented the country in Athens as an official player.
Although Cheng Fei only finished fourth and missed the medal at the Athens Olympics, the experience of participating in the competition brought her a different feeling, and added valuable experience to her, and the whole world is looking forward to the rising star of gymnastics.
After the journey to Athens, after considering Cheng Fei's leg strength advantage, the coach asked her to change to vault. At first, she was a little puzzled, but she was quickly relieved by her father's explanation, and then she threw herself into even harder training.
In November 2005, at the World Gymnastics Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Cheng Fei shocked the world with a "kick back hand flip body 180 ° connected straight body front flip body 540 °", this extremely difficult move not only made Cheng Fei win the championship with a high score of 9.656, but also filled the gap that China has never won the world number one in the vault competition, even the international sports world named this move "Cheng Fei jump".
As soon as Cheng Fei jumped, he caused a sensation in the whole world.
However, for Cheng Fei, this success is just the beginning.
In 2006, she won gold medals in the Gymnastics World Cup, World Championships and Asian Games.
In 2007, she won the Gymnastics World Cup and World Championships again, and officially became the captain of the Chinese women's gymnastics team in November.
In 2008, at the Olympics on her doorstep, she led the Chinese women's gymnastics team to defeat the defending United States team under great pressure and win the women's team championship, creating the history of Chinese women's gymnastics team championships.
She became a veritable "queen of gymnastics".
Injury-ridden and regrettable transformation
For a time, Cheng Fei became a well-known figure in the Chinese gymnastics industry, countless halos were put on her body, praise was endless, and Cheng Fei's years of hard training finally paid off.
However, a sudden accident made her have to stop and think about her future.
One day in June 2012, as usual, the athletes of the national women's gymnastics team were training in an intense and orderly manner.
"Come on, Cheng Fei is injured!"
At this time, an exclamation broke the calm in the training hall.
It turned out that during the training, Cheng Fei slipped under his feet and accidentally fell off the equipment.
"Ah! It hurts! I saw her biting her lip fiercely, curled up on the ground, holding her ankles fiercely with both hands, looking very painful.
After the team doctor's examination, she accidentally tore the Achilles tendon!
Seeing that the London Olympics are coming, but he may miss the Olympics due to injury, Cheng Fei's heart is very anxious.
"I'm fine, I can still continue training after a few days of recovery!"
Cheng Fei kept saying to the coach, but seeing her physical condition, the coach could only shake his head helplessly.
As an athlete, high-intensity exercise has long overwhelmed Cheng Fei's body, and this injury has made it even worse.
If Cheng Fei continues to train, it is likely that the Achilles tendon of the foot cannot be restored, and eventually he can only be with a wheelchair for life.
In desperation, she took the advice of coach Lu Shanzhen and announced her retirement in June 2012, leaving the gymnastics arena where she had struggled for eleven years to transform into a coach.
Cheng Fei has always had a stubbornness in her bones, no matter what she does, she always demands that she do her best, which is the case when she is an athlete and still like this when she is a coach.
When Wuhan Sports Institute threw an olive branch to himself, thinking of passing on his gymnastics experience to the next generation, Cheng Fei gladly accepted and came to Wuhan Sports Institute to work as a gymnastics coach.
But when she actually became a coach, she realized that how to do it and how to teach others how to do it are two completely different concepts. So, she began to study sports extensively, and whenever she had time, she "locked up" herself in the library, and after a while, she finally became a qualified "teacher".
The future is set, and good people are hard to find
However, what is surprising is that although Cheng Fei has many honors and is a world champion, until now, she has not married at the age of 34, which can't help but make her father Cheng Ligao very anxious, and even said publicly:
"Now I don't pursue what kind of achievements she has, I only hope that she can be an ordinary person, be able to marry a good family, and live a stable life"
What girl is not pregnant with spring? In fact, it is not that Cheng Fei is unwilling to get married, but several things are blocking her road to marriage.
Cheng Fei has always been a person who is very attentive to everything, and unlike other coaches who prefer to train professional athletes, Cheng Fei found the current problem of insufficient reserve strength and weak grassroots strength in mainland gymnastics when he went to Wuhan.
Therefore, she devoted all her energy to organizing and teaching children's interest training classes. She always believes that children are the future of the motherland, and only by truly letting children fall in love with the sport of gymnastics and are willing to engage in gymnastics from the bottom of their hearts will there be successors to gymnastics in the mainland.
Everyone's energy is limited, and she poured all her energy and time into gymnastics, naturally not caring about her feelings.
In addition to work, appearance factors also greatly affected Cheng Fei's love life.
It turned out that, like many retired athletes, Cheng Fei was also troubled by weight.
During the period of athletes, every day is high-intensity training, regular diet, weight can naturally be controlled. But after retiring, the amplitude of training has decreased, and the diet is no longer regular, coupled with the fact that many drugs taken due to injuries contain a lot of hormones, Cheng Fei's weight naturally rose, and even approached the 200 mark at its heaviest.
The excess weight caused her to have some feelings of inferiority in her heart, and many weight loss methods were used with little effect, which may have become a barrier on the road to Cheng Fei's marriage. So much so that before her mentor Lu Shanzhen died in 2020, she was still thinking about Cheng Fei's marriage, Cheng Fei won glory for the country in the first 10 years, won numerous awards, and then cultivated a batch of teenagers in the next 10 years, but unfortunately he is still alone, which is embarrassing.
However, for Cheng Fei, whether it is an athlete or a coach, as long as she can engage in the gymnastics career she loves, she is happy. I believe that one day, Cheng Fei will definitely find his own wishful Langjun, like his father said, marry a good family, and be happy in peace.