Considerate丨13 projects win 12 gold! You can always trust Quan Hongchan to be better

At the Fukuoka Swimming World Championships, the Chinese diving team once again showed amazing dominance. Won 12 gold medals in 13 diving events. This makes us wonder, what is the secret of their strength and longevity?

Written by Cao Yaqi

Editor丨 Feng Xiao

In basketball writing, there is a rather arrogant starting style called, "Kobe Bryant only scored 47 points!" ”

Now, at the Fukuoka Swimming World Championships, when all the diving events have competed, we can also paraphrase this meme: the Chinese diving team has only won 12 gold medals (there are 13 diving events in the event).

Although there are some small regrets, they have not been able to set a record of winning all the gold medals in diving events in two consecutive world championships, but the loss of only one gold medal in the two major competitions cannot help but amaze people at the dominance of the Chinese diving team.

The Chinese diving team won the honor of the best diving team in the Fukuoka Swimming World Championships

The Chinese diving team has always been famous for its long-term prosperity. Data show that since China's participation in the Olympic Games, diving has won a total of 47 gold medals, surpassing weightlifting, gymnastics, table tennis, shooting and swimming, contributing the most gold medals to each event. What is even more amazing is that the Chinese diving team also won seven gold medals in eight diving competitions in the two Olympic Games in 2016 and 2020. From this point of view, the Chinese diving team can be called the dream team of China's Olympic dream team.

Looking back on the past 40 years, even table tennis and badminton have had a trough, and weightlifting has not been able to thrive in some events, but only diving has shown stability as always. Since the Chinese diving team participated in the Olympic Games in 1984, their level in every event has been world-class.

This makes one wonder: why are they so strong? This story should start with two bronze medals.

Quan Hongchan at the Fukuoka Swimming World Championships

1 Bronze Medal Casting Sports Team Culture

You know, in the field of diving, there are three events with the highest gold content: the Olympic Games, the World Championships and the World Cup. In the 80s of last century, the Chinese diving team shocked the world when it debuted.

In 1981, the Chinese diving team won three gold medals in its World Cup debut (Shi Meiqin's women's 3m springboard, Chen Xiaoxia's women's 10m platform and Li Hongping's men's 10m platform). At the 4th World Swimming Championships in 1982 the following year, Peng Yuanchun and Zhou Jihong won bronze medals for the Chinese team in the women's 3-meter springboard and women's 10-meter platform respectively. In 1984, the Chinese diving team made its Olympic debut, and Zhou Jihong won a valuable Olympic gold medal (women's 10m platform) for the young team.

At the 1984 Olympics, Zhou Jihong won the women's 10m platform gold medal for China

It stands to reason that it should be a joy for a fledgling sports team to achieve so many gold medals and achievements in their first Olympic cycle. From an insider perspective, sports teams are more concerned about the two bronze medals in the swimming world championships than which gold medals, or the hidden problems behind these two gold losses.

At that time, the Chinese diving team before the World Championships could be described as full of ambition. They first won four gold medals at the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran, then won their first World Series gold medal at the 1979 Universiade, and followed by outstanding international competitions. In 1981, he won three more gold medals at the World Cup. This made it widely believed that the Chinese diving team would return fully loaded when he went to the World Championships. As a result, the team won two bronze medals.

This has led diving experts at home and abroad to have the view that "the Chinese diving team is not mature and lacks experience"; It also triggered a summary of "too little training, unsystematic, and declining level due to more international exchanges, lack of understanding of the main opponents, poor psychological quality, and no longer have advantages in difficulty and technology". In addition, vigilance in times of peace and constant challenges have become the sports team culture of the Chinese diving team, which has been passed down to this day. This also laid a solid spiritual foundation for their longevity for more than 40 years.

2 The father of diving was visionary

And if there is only spiritual guidance, without practical landing measures, then even the best sports team culture will become a castle in the air. In this regard, the Chinese diving team has gradually developed a very effective training and training system.

Specific to the difficulty of the challenge, as early as the 60s of last century, the Chinese diving team determined the technical development direction of "difficult, accurate, ingenious and beautiful"; In 1975, Xu Yiming, the former head coach of the Chinese diving team, known as the "father of Chinese diving", let the players try to train super difficult movements such as flipping forward for four and a half weeks, such as Lin Shizhong's 109C, Jin Weidong's 207C, Mak Zhongmin's 5237D, Li Kongzheng's 307C, 407C, Wu Guocun's 5135D, 5337D, 634C and so on.

Xu Yiming and the "diving queen" Gao Min

This is avant-garde to the point of being very "outrageous"! Because at that time, these moves did not even appear on FINA's difficulty chart. By 1981, when these new movement difficulty tables were officially available, the Chinese diving team had been exposed to them for more than 5 years. The Chinese diving team has earned the reputation of "walking ahead of the world's difficulty chart".

It is precisely with such a forward-looking vision and solid technical accumulation that in that era, even if the strong European and American teams represented by the United States and the former Soviet Union were very strong, Xu Yiming still had the courage to release a proud statement in an interview: "The goal of the Chinese diving team is to win all the gold medals in the future world series." To this day, this is also the ultimate goal of the Chinese diving team to compete in every World Series.

3 Nurture is both strong and soft

Of course, it is impossible to rely on the difficulty of the action to advance only by winning all the gold medals, and talent reserves and internal competition are another great weapon for the Chinese diving team.

Among them, thanks to China's Olympic strategy, local sports bureaus pay attention to the talent reserve of diving events, and also benefit from the diving team's own achievements, which are attractive enough for young people. For a long time, the range of materials selected by the diving team has always aroused the envy of other sports teams. Because they can not only select reserve talents from diving amateur sports schools, but also select talents from gymnastics and skills amateur sports schools. The rich talent reserve has made the echelon construction of the Chinese diving team mature to an amazing point.

Zhou Jihong instructed the Chinese diving team to prepare for the Olympics

For young athletes, they are also happy to join the big family of the Chinese diving team. Because the coaching staff has always had a management style of "strict training and competition, gentle life in ordinary times". After Zhou Jihong won the Los Angeles Olympic Championship that year, he once lamented, "In addition to his parents, Director Xu (Xu Yiming) is my closest person." And when Zhou Jihong became the team leader, she played the role of "parent" in the diving team. The food, clothing, shelter and safety of the whole team touched her heart - of course, there is no need to repeat their strictness to the players during training, but their sweat was covered up the moment they entered the water.

All this makes the Chinese diving team not only trust veterans, but also dare to use newbies in domestic and foreign competitions. It is under such a happy internal and external environment that China's diving talents continue to emerge, and there has never been a fault line. And the fact that 14-year-old Quan Hongchan can shine at the Tokyo Olympics cannot be said to be accidental. She is backed by the education system of the powerful Chinese diving team.

Quan Hongchan in training

4 Black technology emerges one after another

In addition, what few people know is that the Chinese diving team also attaches great importance to the use of "black technology".

The sports team has always attached great importance to scientific research, scientific training and scientific innovation, and is constantly writing brilliant together with the diving team. For example, in the 70s of last century, sports teams innovated the advanced training method of "combining land and water, focusing on water, using land for water, and first land and then water", and carried out a large number of special practical technical training such as plates, tables, and bullet nets on land, and then quickly transferred into the water; Created technologies such as "looking at the target to open" and "pressurized water into the water". This gradually formed the style and advantages of Chinese diving.

At the same time, sports teams have also continued to reform training equipment, inventing land protective belts, net protective belts, bearing protective belts and water protective belts, etc., effectively preventing injuries and helping athletes find aerial sensations, which allows athletes to no longer wear sponge vests and jump down with their eyes closed during training.

The Chinese diving team uses advanced customized technology and equipment to assist in training

With the development of the times, scientific management and scientific training play an increasingly important role in the ranks. As early as more than 20 years ago, in order to improve the quality of training, Zhou Jihong, the leader of the diving team, equipped each coach with a computer; In 2000, the Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences also unconditionally developed a set of diving training management software for the diving team; The diving team at the Tokyo Olympics won 7 gold medals, which also made the "3D + AI diving auxiliary training system" behind it the focus of heated discussions in the outside world. These scientific aids are silently contributing to the achievements of the diving team behind the scenes.

epilogue

It is these that constitute the enduring strength of the Chinese diving team. Although the Fukuoka World Championships lost gold in the final men's 10m platform event, brushing shoulders with the third gold medal (all 10 gold medals at the 2011 Shanghai World Championships and all 13 gold medals at the 2022 Budapest World Championships), the diving team is still worthy of its dream team label, and the failure to win 13 gold medals is also a motivation to urge mobilizers to continue to move forward - after all, on the Olympic stage, whether it is the 4 gold era or the 8 gold era, None of the Chinese team ever achieved their dream of winning a gold medal in diving.

Can the dream come true in Paris next year?