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Text: Dana Entertainment
Editor: Danale Entertainment
Friends who pay attention to badminton must be very familiar with Li Yongbo. At the trough of the development of badminton in the mainland, it was this head coach of the badminton team with outstanding ability but arbitrary style that cultivated 92 world champions, including Lin Dan, Zhang Ning, Chen Hong and other outstanding badminton players are his students.
It is precisely because of such a head coach and many excellent athletes that the Chinese badminton team is famous in the international arena.
So what method did Li Yongbo use to cultivate one world champion after another? Why would such a good coach go into business? What is he doing now?
In 1962, Li Yongbo was born in Dalian, Liaoning Province. We often say that talent determines a person's ceiling. Li Yongbo belongs to the kind that God holds three bowls of rice in one hand and forcibly stuffs it into your mouth. Li Yongbo's first skill awakened - singing.
As he grew older, Li Yongbo awakened a second skill - sports. Excellent children are indeed the pride of every family, but too good children born in ordinary families are a trouble.
The family, of course, wanted him to do everything well. But to be honest, it is not realistic for a teenager to practice singing well while doing sports, and he still has his studies.
13-year-old Li Yongbo has reached a fork in the road in life. At that time, he had three choices: go to Guangzhou to concentrate on singing and become a singer; went to Changchun to learn acting and become an actor; Go to Beijing to practice sports and become an athlete.
Although these places are good, no parent's parents can throw their 13-year-old children out when they are not at ease. After discussing with the family, they finally chose to let Li Yongbo participate in the Liaoning badminton team, if he can become a real badminton player, the future is also bright. At this point, the gears of fate began to turn.
Although Li Yongbo's athletic talent is good, there are many people who can enter the provincial team, and those who can play here are the dragons and phoenixes among the people. In contrast, Li Yongbo participated in fewer games before, and there was less special training, let alone playing, and the training intensity of the provincial team alone was enough for him.
Moreover, the veteran members of the team who have been fighting for many years will naturally not regard this hairy boy as a human character. Competitive sports only look at achievements, have strength, have achievements, in order to be respected. Obviously, all this made Li Yongbo, who was originally good at himself, feel great pressure.
The proud teenager began his journey of growth, and when others trained, he was training. When others rest, he is training. "I just spend all the time I spend drinking coffee practicing with other people."
Li Yongbo's hard work allowed him to gain a firm foothold in the team and also met his best partner in his athletic career - Tian Bingyi.
After a long run-in, the two picked up rackets and began to change the situation that Chinese badminton men's doubles lagged behind for a long time. In 1987 and 1989, Li and Tian won the World Championship. Since then, it has included the badminton World Cup champion, the World Grand Prix finals champion, the All England badminton champion and so on.
However, any athlete must look directly at the end of age. In 1992, 30-year-old Li Yongbo inevitably approached the end of his career. I wanted to retire with another Olympic men's doubles gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics. Unfortunately, he suffered a thigh strain in the first game, and finally won the bronze medal with his own will, and also said goodbye to his athletic career.
Looking back on Li Yongbo's 14-year career, he has won a total of 37 championships, including 6 world championships. The emergence of him and Tian Bingyi promoted the development of the field of badminton in mainland China. So, in the year after his retirement, he returned to the badminton team as a coach.
At this time, Li Yongbo can be said to be "appointed by the defeated army, ordered between dangers." You think, Li Yongbo is 30 years old, and the same players as him are basically at the end of their careers.
However, the new generation of players still needs time to grow. The mainland badminton team fell into a situation of disconnection, and in 1993 the mainland badminton team lost to Birmingham, England.
Competitive sports only look at results, and the emotion of failure lingers over the heads of every team member, and of course, it is difficult for the country to accept the repeated defeats of the players cultivated by real money every year.
From top to bottom, all the pressure is focused on this Coach Lee. In order to sweep away the haze in the team and reassure the country, Li Yongbo promised that "I will cultivate 100 Chinese badminton world champions".
Some people believe Li Yongbo's words, some people don't believe it, and some people see jokes. Although you play well and win many championships, it does not mean that you can be a good coach, let alone that you can teach world champions.
After officially taking office, Li Yongbo had a principle of "as long as you don't die, you will practice in death." It was the devil time of the national badminton players, every day in addition to practicing is practice, who wants to rest, leave the national team. Of course, this is not Li Yongbo's revenge mentality.
Train the team members like crazy, just to find the weaknesses of each of them as quickly as possible. While the players were training, Li Yongbo was staring at the side. When they finished training and rested, Li Yongbo watched everyone's training videos over and over again.
In order to raise the level of the team to a higher level, he invited his old teammates Tian Bingyi and Li Mao back as coaches. Under the strict training of the coaches and the hard work of all the team members, Guoyu finally came to harvest the time.
In 1995, the Chinese women's doubles players Ge Fei and Gu Jun defeated Alyssa and Zelin, Ye Mouying defeated Wang Lianxiang, Sun Jun defeated Albi, and the Chinese team won the Sudirman Cup in one fell swoop. In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, Ge Fei and Gu Jun won the gold medal in women's doubles badminton.
Since then, the Chinese badminton team has been unstoppable, and has continuously won gold and silver medals in relevant world competitions in the field of badminton such as the World Championships, Thomas Cup, Uber Cup, Sudirman Cup, and Olympic Games, constantly consolidating the international dominance of the Chinese badminton team.
During coach Li Yongbo's tenure, the Chinese badminton team won the Sudirman Cup nine times, the Uber Cup eight times, the Thomas Cup five times, the World Championships in 2010 and 2011, and the London Olympic badminton championship in 2012.
As the saying goes, people are afraid of being famous, pigs are afraid of being strong. If you want to pull up a badminton team that has almost sunk to the bottom and send it to the stage of the world championship, you can't do it without a bit of brazen arrogance. Since 1996, after the Atlantan Olympics, the voice of dissatisfaction with Li Yongbo in the team has become louder.
At that time, because Guoyu finally achieved a breakthrough of zero gold medals in the Olympic Games, after returning to China, the General Administration of Sports and sponsors issued a large amount of money to the team. Everyone waited for a long time, and the bonus was never handed out. Some people suspect that Li Yongbo stole it. Due to his always domineering and arrogant attitude, Li Mao, Li Lingwei and others joined hands with more than half of the coaches in the team to report Li Yongbo's corruption.
Finally, after investigation, Li Yongbo did not steal the bonus. But everyone's contradictions have changed from secret fighting to open fighting.
The turmoil over the bonus incident has not yet passed, Li Yongbo has implemented the reform of the coach employment system in the team, and reported that his coaches have been laid off. Some people left other countries, some people were transferred from their original units, and Li Yongbo was once again put on the cusp of public opinion.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Li Yongbo forcibly ordered Zhou Mi to concede the ball to Zhang Ning in the semifinals. As a result, the former lost the chance to win the championship and was eventually forced to leave the national team. At the 2012 London Olympics, in the women's doubles quarter-match of badminton, Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli faced the South Korean pair of Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na, and the two sides were suspected of negative matches and were transferred by the International Olympic Committee.
Moreover, during Li Yongbo's coaching, the national badminton team was heavily commercialized. After the national badminton team won excellent results, Li Yongbo frequently haunted entertainment and commercial places, frantically endorsed various brands, and even made MVs and movies. Under the leadership of the coach, the players went down to the field to make money.
The most important thing is that Li Yongbo is crony. Most of them appoint their favorite or self-cultivated team members, and only measure talents by the number and quality of gold medals, ignoring the cultivation of new talents. Under the accumulation of many non-positive factors, Guoya fell again.
In 2016, Rio won only two gold medals in men's singles and men's doubles, which was far from the previous goal and was criticized by the General Administration of Sports. In April 2017, 55-year-old Li Yongbo stepped down as the head coach of the Chinese badminton team and became the vice president of the fifth Chinese Badminton Association. In January 2019, Li Yongbo was elected as the new vice president of the badminton association, and he completely retired from the national team. Before he left the national team, although he failed to fulfill his promise of 100 titles, he had already brought out 92 titles.
Li Yongbo, who retired from the front line, originally wanted to accompany his wife and children at home. After all, in the years he has been coaching, everything outside the home is taken care of by his wife Xie Ying behind his back. It's just that Li Yongbo is not very comfortable with the leisurely "retired uncle" life.
When I went to Malaysia to discuss cooperation, I was attracted by the local "Musang King" durian. This durian kernel has a lot of flesh, golden color, and dense mouth. Li Yongbo saw the huge business opportunities of durian, and with the help of friends, he quickly completed the relevant procedures.
His durian orchard is located in Kelantan, Malaysia, covering more than 200 acres and planting nearly 1,500 durian trees. For this investment, Li Yongbo is very confident.
However, in 2020, Li Yongbo returned to the badminton industry he knew and loved, and established the "Li Yongbo Badminton Club", mainly engaged in youth badminton training and event operation. In 2022, "Li Yongbo International Badminton Club" opened, and Li Yongbo, who has not appeared for a long time, has a blessed body and white sideburns.
At the opening ceremony, a reporter asked him if he could still return to coaching the national team. He smiled and said nothing, when talking about the development of the club, he once again said that he will not forget his original intention, and cultivate more talents in the national badminton industry, with the goal of cultivating 100 world champions.
How to say, to talk about achievements, Li Yongbo has made great contributions to the Chinese badminton team.
To say that mistakes, whether it is excessive commercial operation or some inappropriate decisions on the field, do affect the healthy and long-term development of the national team.
But in any case, at least when Li Yongbo left the national team and was invited by many countries, he has always been firm in the principle that "he does not coach badminton teams other than the Chinese team".
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