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preface
Looking back at the history of Chinese badminton, Li Yongbo is a legend that no one can bypass without mentioning.
As an athlete of the Chinese badminton team, Li Yongbo won the world championship 6 times, overcoming difficulties to win glory for the country, and then he was appointed as the head coach of the national team when the national badminton was not connected, leading the team to create the glory of Chinese badminton again.
When he just gave up teaching at the auction, Li Yongbo was determined to say that he would cultivate 100 world champions, and after leaving office, he resolutely ran abroad and started an unexpected durian career.
Did Li Yongbo's oath be fulfilled? Has he said goodbye to the badminton altar now?
01. The splendor of the 80s in the badminton altar
Embarking on the career path of badminton was the most important choice Li Yongbo made in his youth.
Some people are born mediocre and can only be achieved through hard work, and some people are born gifted in a certain field and choose to follow this path to the end.
However, Li Yongbo is different, he is a person who was born with a full skill point.
Li Yongbo was born in Dalian in 1962 to a family of ordinary workers.
When all the children still had a headache for the physical education test, Li Yongbo, who had long hands and legs, had already shown his excellent athletic talent in front of everyone.
Whether it's sprinting or football, he is the brightest star on the sports field and achieves quite good results.
When Li Yongbo picked up the badminton racket for the first time, a wave of excitement and kindness surged in his heart.
At that time, he had no contact with formal badminton training, but he played by himself, but he also played well.
His father saw that Li Yongping was also talented in the sport of badminton, so he did not hesitate to spend a lot of effort to find him a professional coach, asking him to study well with the coach and strive to be famous in this sport.
Li Yongbo has improved quite quickly, and by the fifth grade of primary school, he has been specially recruited into the provincial team.
However, at this time, Li Yongbo did not think about playing badminton in the future, because there were other options in front of him.
Heaven not only filled Li Yongbo with athletic talent skill points, but also gave him a beautiful singing voice.
Li Yongbo was born with excellent voice conditions, and often overwhelmed the crowd at parties and parties, and anyone who listened to him sing would be deeply immersed in it, and many girls were also fascinated by him at that time because of his good singing.
In addition, Li Yongbo's appearance is good, and when he was a teenager, a scout wanted him to be an actor in Guangzhou.
Whether it is to be a singer or a professional athlete, it is a rare opportunity for Li Yongbo.
However, this means that if he chooses one, he must give up the other, after all, fish and bear's paw cannot have both.
In the end, in order to be closer to home, Li Yongbo still chose to give up the opportunity to be photogenic and concentrated on picking up the racket instead.
The training of the provincial team in Liaoning Province is already quite hard, but Li Yongbo often asks the coach to train himself.
At this time, Li Yongbo, who made a choice, was determined to make a name for himself in the sport of badminton, and his goal was to enter the national team and finally have the opportunity to win glory for the country.
Li Yongbo himself is very talented and works particularly the training ground, for which he is the fastest improving and most outstanding member of the provincial team, and after three years of training, he was successfully selected for the Chinese badminton team.
After coming to the national team, Li Yongbo suddenly felt the pressure doubled.
Li Yongbo's entry into the team coincided with the golden age of the national team, and the 80s were the era when Chinese badminton dominated the world.
At this time, the national team is full of masters, the head coach has quite strict requirements for the players, and the training plan formulated is almost perverted, and there are competitions and assessments between players from time to time, in short, it adheres to one purpose:
Stay ahead and defeat all your enemies.
Before entering the national team, Li Yongbo was the leader of the provincial team, but when he came here, everything had to start from scratch.
It is with his own perseverance that Li Yongbo's strength has greatly increased, and he even met his golden partner Tian Bingyi.
In the three years since joining the team, Li Tian's group has participated in a number of competitions and gradually cultivated an extraordinary tacit understanding.
After that, the two went to Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Malaysia to participate in badminton tournaments, and in just two years, they won the national badminton championship.
In 1986, Li Tian's team won the Thomas Cup, and a year later won the World Championship.
It is the emergence of the Li Tian combination that has changed the perception of mainland badminton doubles lagging behind in international competitions, making Chinese badminton shine in the international badminton arena.
02. Coaching career
Li Yongbo has won a total of six world championships as an athlete, including two world championships, three Thomas Cup champions and one world Olympic performance title.
In addition, he has won many World Cups, World Grand Prix Finals, and is a well-deserved badminton champion.
The biggest wish of many athletes is to win the Olympic championship, and Li Yongbo is no exception.
In 1992, badminton was listed as an official sport at the Barcelona Olympics, and Li Yongbo's goal was to win glory for the country in this important event and win an Olympic men's doubles gold medal.
However, at this time, he was 30 years old, and his physical strength and strength were far inferior to when he was young, so he only won the Olympic bronze medal.
After that, Li Yongbo chose to retire and end his career as an athlete, and the failure to win the championship became his lifelong regret.
What Li Yongbo didn't expect was that even though he couldn't play anymore, he still couldn't leave badminton.
In the 90s of the 20th century, the mainland badminton team fell into a trough, and a group of athletes who achieved brilliant results for the motherland in the 80s retired one after another, but the newcomers in the team were too young to carry the burden.
At this time, what the Chinese badminton team needs is a coach who will save the building, and Li Yongbo is the one who was selected.
In other words, no one else dared to be a coach in this young and yellow season, but Li Yongbo let go of his courage to work.
He said that he will definitely live up to the heavy responsibility given by the country and threatened to teach 100 world championships.
Although Li Yongbo is full of confidence, reality still gives him a blow.
Li Yongbo had never coached before, and he felt a little confused when he suddenly took office.
In his first season as a coach, the mainland badminton team lost the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup in a row, and the whole team had neither motivation nor cohesion and unity spirit, which made the confident Li Yongbo's heart instantly fall to the bottom.
However, at this time, he was not discouraged, but calmed down and carefully analyzed the problems that appeared in the team.
Li Yongbo believes that the biggest problem of the national badminton team is that it has no fighting spirit and no competitive spirit.
To this end, he boldly selected a group of younger athletes, also paired with young coaches, in order to bring in new blood.
At the same time, he opened a strict elimination mechanism to screen out players who failed in time, making the whole team nervous.
Secondly, Li Yongbo found that the national team at this time had loose discipline, lacked a sense of time, and training was far less stringent than before.
To this end, the newly appointed Li Yongbo decided to carry out a thorough reform, focusing on correcting the bad atmosphere in the ranks.
He has a strict training schedule that both players and coaches need to strictly adhere, and anyone who violates discipline is severely punished.
Once a certain team member missed the time for the bus to go to the airport, Li Yongbo directly confiscated his ticket and scolded him fiercely.
In addition to strictly managing the team, Li Yongbo also paid attention to the actual combat exercises of the team members.
When the team members are training, Li Yongbo will always stand at the front of the team to check.
He not only looks at whether the team's strength points and action skills are in place, but also considers the actual situation of each team member and studies tactics that are more suitable for each player, so as to cultivate each player into a winning weapon on the field.
Because Li Yongbo's requirements are particularly strict, there is no member of the entire badminton team who is not afraid of Li Yongbo.
However, it is precisely because Coach Li leads the team strictly, which makes the Chinese badminton team create glory again.
During Li Yongbo's coaching career, the Chinese badminton team won the Sudirman Cup nine times, the Uber Cup eight times, the Thomas Cup five times, the World Championship Cup twice and all badminton titles at the Olympic Games once.
In his 24 years of coaching career, Li Yongbo has coached 92 world champions and successfully built a "dream team" belonging to China.
03. Go abroad to sell durian
Although Li Yongbo created the legend of Chinese badminton when he was a coach, the controversy over him has never stopped.
These include a series of incidents such as "handicap and match-fixing", over-commercializing the Chinese badminton team, arbitrarily acting in the team, and arranging sons into the team.
These turmoil caused Li Yongbo's image to plummet in the hearts of the public.
The most critical problem is that since 2013, the performance of the Chinese badminton team has begun to decline, and the management of the team has also had frequent problems.
The results achieved at the Rio 2016 Olympics were also disappointing.
The team could not play results, and Li Yongbo, as the head coach, could not escape the blame.
As public opinion from all walks of life called for a change of coach grew, Li Yongbo finally chose to step down as coach in 2017.
After retiring from his post, he did not sit idle, and began to help his son Li Gen do business together.
As early as a few years ago, Li Gen founded a sports company related to badminton, and now his father is also idle, and he is now negotiating cooperation as a partnership.
However, Li Yongbo did not focus entirely on sports, but instead looked at the project of growing tropical fruits.
Once, when he went to Malaysia to negotiate business, he accidentally found a business opportunity in durian fruit, and directly purchased more than 200 acres of land in Malaysia and planted more than 1,400 durian trees himself.
After several years of hard work, Li Yongbo's durian field quickly paid off.
Although Li Yongbo has left the badminton altar, the badminton altar has never forgotten this legend.
In the past few years since Li Yongbo planted durian, the Malaysian badminton world has always wanted him to be the head coach of Malaysia, but he has never agreed, presumably keeping his promise not to teach foreign players.
In addition, Li Yongbo has always remembered his vow to teach 100 world championships in the past, so he established the "Li Yongbo Badminton Club" in 2020, and the main responsibility is to teach young people to play badminton.
Although these dolls do not look big now, they may not support the future of Chinese badminton in the future.
Although Li Yongbo's career has been controversial, it is a joy that he is now back in badminton.
Whether it is the achievements of his career as an athlete or the brilliance he created during his coaching period, this is a miracle that no one can deny, and Li Yongbo's strength is there, and he has been able to withstand a lot of public opinion.
The veteran can naturally stabilize people's hearts, and Li Yongbo's return proves that he has never forgotten his love and heart.
I sincerely hope that Li Yongbo can realize his vow of cultivating 100 champions as soon as possible, and wish Guoyu another brilliant future!
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