Ye Shiwen was born in 1996 in an ordinary family in Hangzhou, born at 6:58 a.m., and the news was broadcast on television. Ye Shiwen's father saw the display of the national flag and vaguely felt that this child's life would be extraordinary after all.
Due to her parents' work, she was sent to her grandmother's house on the outskirts of Hangzhou just nine months after she was born. As a child, she lived a free life in the mountains.
In 2002, Ye Shiwen entered the upper grade of kindergarten. The teacher saw that she was much taller than other children her age and physically coordinated in all aspects, so he recommended her to the child's swimmer coach.
Ye Shiwen initially hoped that her mother would learn to swim. It would be nice if she fell into the water and didn't drown, because Ye Shiwen likes to go to West Lake to play. In the past, my mother was afraid of accidentally falling into the lake. Now there is an opportunity to learn to swim, and Ye's mother naturally supports it.
Ye Shiwen has an unexpected talent for swimming. Although she didn't like swimming much at first, she didn't feel tired in the water. Physical recovery is also fast.
She slowly discovered that she was the fastest swimmer in the training gym. And Wei Wei, the enlightenment coach, said:
"Ono is a big man, with long arms and long legs, soft ankles, fast kicks, and moves like a small motor in water."
In less than half a year, Coach Wei saw Ye Shiwen's talent. He told Ye Shiwen's parents:
"As long as there are no accidental injuries, your child will fight for the Olympics in the future."
Over the next five years, Coach Wei developed Ye Shiwen into an all-around man who could swim butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.
He became famous at a young age, but he did not expect it to become the pinnacle of his sports career
From the age of 10, Ye Shiwen's life seemed to be in trouble, all the way up.
In 2006, at the age of 10, he participated in the 50-meter freestyle at the Zhejiang Provincial Games and won the championship.
In 2008, at the age of 12, he won 1 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze in the swimming competition of the Zhejiang Provincial Games and was selected for the provincial team.
In 2010, at the age of 14, he was selected for the national team under coach Xu Guoyi.
Coach Xu Guoyi has been a coach since 1994 and has trained famous athletes such as Wu Peng, Xu Jiayu, Chen Huijia, Liu Yaxin and so on in the past 26 years.
He had no children in his life and devoted all his efforts to the players he coached. Among them, he even regarded Ye Shiwen as his daughter.
Since the beginning of this year, Ye Shiwen has made his debut. Over the years, she won a series of national championships and won two gold medals.
In December, at the World Short Course Swimming Championships in Dubai, she finished second in the 200m individual medley and 400m individual medley. This continued until London 2012, when she broke the world record with a time of 4:28.43 and won the gold medal. Fight for glory!
I thought that this would be the starting point for Ye Shiwen to go to the world, but I didn't expect that this battle would become the highlight of her sports career. At the age of 16, it took only two years for her to become the first "Grand Slam" in Chinese swimming history, winning the Olympics, World Championships, Short Course World Championships and Asian Games. This is also the first gold slam in the history of Chinese swimming. The expectations of the world around her are enormous.
For her outstanding performance at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Ye Shiwen was nominated for the only global sports awards ceremony, the 2013 Laureus World Sports Awards. Since then, Ye Shiwen's wax figures have also entered the Juniper Wax Museum in Beijing.
To say that before the London Olympics, Ye Shiwen was young, healthy, goal-oriented and ambitious. All these factors supported her gold medal in every competition.
After the London Olympics, she didn't know how to face all the changes that awaited her.
She feels that she is already an Olympic champion, a world number one, and a person who has high expectations, so it would be a shame if she did not win the next competition.
She was pushed to the top at a very young age before she learned to face loss. She began to lose sleep and anxiety, but did not know how to cope.
In the second year of the London Olympics, she finished second in the women's 200m medley heats and semifinals at the World Swimming Championships in Barcelona, but suffered an accident in the final.
A strong desire to compete made her determined to protect her first, but when she found herself falling behind in the first place, the string in her heart suddenly collapsed, and the more she wanted to overcome it, she couldn't do anything. In the end, it did not make it to the top three.
For the first time, she did not stand on the podium in an international competition.
Then the media was stunned by this success, "17-year-old Ye Shiwen experienced a fiasco", "Ye Shiwen must seriously sum up the lessons of the failure", "What happened in Barcelona disappointed and dazed Ye Shiwen"...
All kinds of negative news are overwhelming. She had insomnia and anxiety, but she had nowhere to tell.
TV viewers only know her as a "talented girl" and "world champion", but no one realizes that she is just a 17-year-old girl who does not know how to deal with stress and failure.
For the next few years, she suffered from insomnia and physical development.
Many people are unaware of the impact of physical development on female athletes.
Chinese swimming star Fu Yuanhui is in trouble. A bronze medallist at the Rio Olympics, she was strangled in a tight swimsuit during the competition due to her large chest.
Also, during the competition, she missed the gold medal due to the raised curve affecting her speed, unnecessarily increasing the resistance of the water! Therefore, too large breasts are not good for female athletes, at least not only will not improve their performance on the field, but will affect them. Speaking of insomnia, Ye Shiwen has also tried various methods such as soaking his feet, drinking milk, taking melatonin, and meditation, but he has not defeated the beast of insomnia.
However, she is not willing to admit defeat.
A few years later, she won again, but the coach persuaded her to give up
In 2014, she went for a tattoo. She tattooed "You are the best" on her left wrist to remind herself to overcome her fear of the pool. The ribs and ankles are tattooed with a five-pointed star and an encouraging English phrase.
She said: "I really hate failure, I especially hate failure, I want to remember this pain.
The young girl still doesn't know how to accept herself.
The pressure also brought her new lows.
Before the 2015 World Cup in Kazan, Ye Shiwen suffered a broken ankle and missed the final.
At the 2016 Foshan Olympic Trials, she finished seventh in the 400m medley final and withdrew due to abdominal pain.
The 2017 World Cup in Budapest failed.
She didn't and didn't want to throw in the towel, but she couldn't find a solution. He just struggled with insomnia day after day, and the next day he picked himself up and showed up on the training ground. The reason for its declining popularity is not just stress. There are also difficulties in physical development, as well as injuries.
She eventually won the 200m at that year's National Games. After the game, coach Xu Guoyi hugged her and said: You have finally won the championship for you. Forget it, quit the swim team and go to school.
Ye Shiwen decided to leave the swimming team for a while, and Xu Guoyi suggested that she go to Tsinghua University. He helped Ye Shiwen choose Tsinghua University Law School because he believed that law was very difficult to learn, but only the students who returned from this study were "real talents", which would make Ye Shiwen's future life more secure.
At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Ye Shiwen's name was not in the Chinese team's squad for the first time in many years.
"Where did Ye Shiwen go?" , "Did she stop swimming?" "Many networks have speculated.
Ye Shiwen, who just came out of "society"
Tsinghua Law School will not show mercy to the subordinates of the National Athlete Network. Instead, they must complete 162 credits like other students.
The course is more difficult and has more knowledge points. In order to complete her studies, Ye Shiwen had to stay up late every day and read the contents of the pages many times before she could understand it.
But it was also college life that taught her to be an ordinary person.
She used to be a member of the swimming team and was the proud son of heaven. Just think about how to improve your athletic performance and someone else will arrange other things for you. The social environment is very simple. She also developed a rather quiet and quiet personality since she was a child.
But no one in college will take extra care of you, and no one will give you the green light to be a world champion. Everything you want, you have to take the initiative to fight for.
The hard and painstaking study suddenly changed what swimming meant to her. When she stopped thinking of swimming as the only thing in her life, the pressure of winning the championship suddenly disappeared without a trace. She discovered that she loved and enjoyed swimming.
In addition to studying and swimming, she also started growing long hair, eating dessert and shopping. She also has free time to enjoy the campus scenery and really feel the difference between the four seasons.
In the past, in spring, summer, autumn and winter, she was only faced with the blue waves of water in the pool. When she was on the Tsinghua campus, she saw the real four seasons.
Studying in law school also broadened her horizons. She is no longer just obsessed with winning and losing, but has begun to analyze how she should face the difficulties she encountered in the past. She found that in addition to competition, she needed to rely on willpower to win the game. She may have other solutions.
Her swimming performance improved due to reduced stress.
Make up for regrets and fight for the Olympics again
In 2018, she decided to leave school. He wants to get back in the water, he wants to go to the Tokyo Olympics.
But Coach Xu Guoyi was angry. He understood that swimming brought glory to Ye Shiwen, but also brought endless pain. He said: What about your studies? How long will it take you to graduate? Why does it make you so miserable?
But this time back, she is no longer the single-minded genius girl she was at the beginning. Of course, she can't let go of her previous failures, but she understands that it was her love of swimming that brought her back to the field.
Xu Guoyi was helpless and had to agree.
Because he knows that many athletes who come back from retirement give up after training for a certain period of time because of physical decline.
But unexpectedly, Ye Shiwen persisted for 3 years. This includes a one-year postponement of the Olympics.
In July 2019, at the World Swimming Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, Ye Shiwen won another silver medal.
The post "Ye Shiwen is back" immediately appeared on the hot search.
But Ye Shiwen also understands that this competition is more important to her than overcoming her fear of swimming. She felt she could return to the Olympics.
In February 2020, the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China suddenly issued a notice that all athletes must take a physical fitness test and meet the standards before they can participate in the Olympic Games.
The news was undoubtedly a thunderbolt for swimmers.
Swimmers have soft ankles, allowing them to hit the water flexibly. And their muscle groups are different from athletes who are muscular but not suitable for long-distance running on land.
In order to pass the physical test, she continued to practice 3,000-meter running, bench press, and squats. To do this, she gained 3 kg of muscle, which made her feel heavier when she entered the water.
In July 2020, Xu Guoyi passed away.
For Ye Shiwen, Xu Guoyi and his wife are her second parents. She knew that under Xu Guoyi's serious appearance, he actually cared about her. Xu Guoyi likes her swimming performance, but happiness is more important, and even helps her arrange her life after retirement.
In the end, in the Olympic trials, Ye Shiwen missed the Olympics because she was 0.01 seconds behind.
But this time, he didn't regret it.
Because she works hard and pays for love. She also understands that she really enjoys swimming.
After the 2016 Rio Olympics, when she was at her lowest, her retired brother, who was about to get married, gave her candy and asked if she was still exercising. She said she wanted to practice, but the other party said: Do you still want to practice? How hard. She said she liked it very much. The other party did not believe it: "Don't joke, how can you like it." ”
But she was interested: "How can you not like that?" Swimming is actually a very extreme sport, it is exploring your limits. If you didn't love the sport as an athlete, how could you stick with it to this day? ”
As a Grand Slam player, Ye Shiwen no longer values results so much. For her, it is enough to give her all in the competition and spend her life swimming with her.
Ye Shiwen once left the pool to study at Tsinghua University, so Ye Shiwen found that she still couldn't give up swimming. After returning, she enjoyed swimming with a better mindset.
"Actually, it doesn't matter, I'm not particularly disappointed because I try to do my best on every shot. Ye Shiwen said swimming has become integrated into her life. "Swimming is not just a career for me, it's part of life, and I want to live every day."
The talented girl finally found a way to compromise with herself.
She is only 25 years old this year. She has experienced highs and lows. Now she has finally learned to reconcile with herself.
More important than putting on a dazzling crown, Ye Shiwen will get rid of the aura and accept herself.