The Olympic Games are in full swing, and the preparation of many Olympic teams is done in the training bureau. This article would like to record the past events of the Training Bureau as an old comrade of the Training Bureau.
Hua Yigang close-up photo by Li Mingzhen
The Olympics are in full swing. The preparation of many Olympic teams was done at the Training Bureau, which became the focus of attention. Although these teams are not directly under the jurisdiction of the Training Bureau, the importance of the training authority in providing a complete set of logistical support such as meals, accommodation, training, transportation, cultural education and rehabilitation and physiotherapy is still self-evident.
Dormitory complexes
In December 1965, I was transferred from the Shanghai Go team to the national Go team. At that time, the name of the unit of the national team was not the current Training Bureau of the General Administration of Sports, but the Sports Department of the Beijing Institute of Physical Education, which was one of the units directly under the State Sports Commission. I spent a lot of my youth here.
The Sports Commission of the Central People's Government was proclaimed in November 1952, generally known as the National Sports Commission, or the State Sports Commission for short. In March 1998, the State Sports Commission was officially reorganized into the State General Administration of Sport and officially listed on April 6. Beijing Institute of Sport was once a directly subordinate institution of the State Sports Commission, and was upgraded to Beijing Sport University in 1993, with unchanged affiliation. The sports department was originally set up in the sports academy, which was used as the unit name of the national team. After the sports institute was upgraded to a sports university, according to the practice of the education community, the department of sports was upgraded to a competitive sports college, at this time, the sports department of the Beijing Sports Institute had long been renamed the Training Bureau, and no one paid attention to the promotion of the old name.
When I first came to the national team, the training bureau building was on Gymnasium Road. The house number is 2 Stadium Road. Later, he moved to Temple of Heaven East Road and became a neighbor of the Chinese Chess Academy. The former site of the Training Bureau has been transformed into the office building of the general administration of sports.
The old training institute building has six floors, with the fifth and sixth floors being girls' dormitories and the third and fourth floors being boys' dormitories. The first floor is mainly the medical office, canteen and administrative office, and the second floor is mainly the bureau leader's office, the bureau office, the bureau's party committee and personnel office, and the training office. Athletes' dormitories are generally fifteen or six square meters and live for 2 or 3 people. It is particularly worth mentioning that the dormitory, which was built in the 1960s, was paved with solid wooden floors. Everyone knows that the national economy was very difficult at that time, and laying cement must be more cost-effective. According to the official transmission of the superior, Premier Zhou said when approving the construction plan that the athletes were many injuries and illnesses, and the cement floor was wet and cold, which was not conducive to the joints, so the solid wood floor was specially approved. Humble historical facts are heartwarming. For easy washing, each room is equipped with a washbasin. Heating is a common hot water in Beijing. There is no elevator in the building. Later, I heard that this was because at that time, it was stipulated that the building was equipped with an elevator above the seventh floor (inclusive).
Beijing Indoor Stadium
At that time, the venue was centered on the Beijing Gymnasium, with a swimming pool connected to the west and a practice hall to the east. Although the three venues have different functions, they are interconnected, all in one go, quite solid, and proud. Such a large building was born in the 1950s, which is not an easy task. They have a long history with my fate.
In 1962, vice premier Chen Yi personally initiated the children's go competition in six cities, which was held in the east and west conference halls on the third floor of the gymnasium. I met my brother Wang Runan, my brother Nie Weiping and my colleagues. Mr. Chen intently watched the photos of Wang Runan and me playing, taken by a reporter from China Sports News, and became an exhibit of the Training Bureau, China Chess Academy, China Sports News, China Chess Academy Hangzhou Branch, Shanghai Chess Academy and other units. Xinmin Evening News has also reported extensively in recent years.
On November 20, 1985, the first Sino-Japanese Go Tournament, the main general showdown between Nie Weiping and Japanese master Hideyuki Fujisawa was arranged in the west conference room on the first floor of the gymnasium. Mr. Zhu Jifeng, then director of the Sports Department of CCTV, conformed to the trend of the times, resolutely took responsibility, and decided to broadcast live, thus creating a precedent for CCTV to broadcast Go matches live. Thousands of spectators watched The joint lecture by Wang Runan and me. Since then, CCTV and the local TV stations that have been driven have become the norm in broadcasting and recording Go programs, and talking about chess has also become a regular job of professional chess players.
In 1962, Chen Yi watched the Six Cities Children's Go Tournament, and the young chess players Hua Yigang (right) and Wang Runan (left)
I remember very clearly that the daily training of the national Go team was basically arranged in the conference room on the fifth floor of the gymnasium. The swimming pool room has also been used when the meeting room has other tasks or needs to be repaired.
When there is no competition task, the practice hall is the main venue for the daily training of each sports team. The widest inside are basketball and volleyball courts. Both sides of the course use floor-to-ceiling grids to create two wide corridors, which are not used for passage, but training grounds for table tennis, diving and other sports. The north end of the training hall is set up as a weight lifting hall, in order to avoid interference and ensure safety, the north door of the practice hall is permanently locked, and all personnel enter and exit the south gate.
In addition to the main building of the stadium, there are also tennis halls, outdoor track and field fields, outdoor football fields and other venues. Later, table tennis halls, gymnastics halls, badminton halls, weight lifting halls, indoor track and field courts and new dormitories for athletes were built one after another, and the training bureau was expanding day by day.
The rhythm of life
The national team's food standard was 1.80 yuan per day, which was a super high standard in the 1960s. At that time, the standard of food for residential students was generally 12 yuan per month, which is 0.4 yuan per day. It is likely that in reference to this standard, national team athletes have to deduct 12 yuan per month from their salaries for food. When someone does not eat sports stoves during holidays or family visits, they can apply for "withdrawal" in advance, that is, 0.4 yuan per day of self-incestion.
At that time, the national team uniformly stipulated that each team must go out of the morning exercise, roughly 6:00 in the morning, the wake-up bell rang throughout the building, the duration was still quite long, and it was difficult not to wake up. After 15 minutes, the bell starts again, which is called the gathering bell, each team lines up, after counting the number of people, the morning exercise begins, the specific form is decided by the coaches of each team. In Beijing in the 1960s, it was common to have a dozen degrees below zero in winter. Rong Gaotang, a veteran leader of the State Sports Commission, often inspects the team members in the early morning of winter and exercises, and is accustomed to riding motorcycles to the outdoor track and field field. He called out the names of many athletes and greeted them cordially. Among them, the Go players are simply "chicken cranes", and Rong Lao will recognize it at a glance: "You are a Go team." ”
Longtan West Lake Park
Everyone soon found that not far from the side gate of the training bureau, there was a Longtan West Lake Park without admission fees, which was of moderate size and had a circumference of about 800 meters, equivalent to two laps of the athletics field. Many players like to run a lap in the early morning. Since there is Longtan West Lake, there must be Longtan East Lake. This Longtan East Lake is much larger, with a circumference of several thousand meters, and there are two islands in the center of the lake, one large and one small, and there are no buildings on the island of the small lake, and the nearest point to the shore is about one hundred meters. In the special era when normal professional training could not be carried out, Xiaohuxin Island and its annexed waters became a private paradise for young players such as Cao Zhilin, Qiu Xin, Huang Dexun and me. In the summer, we ran to longtan lake, held up sports shorts and other light clothes with one hand, swam sideways to the small lake island, put the clothes on the island, and began to play.
The training bureau also has the habit of taking a unified lunch break. Like morning exercises, there are wake-up bells and collection bells in the afternoon. At 10:00 p.m., the lights go out. It is no exaggeration to say that the pace of life in the Training Bureau is semi-militarized. After staying in the national team for a long time, it is easy to have some kind of dependence on the ringtone, which is the command. The daily life of national team athletes can be described as hard and simple. To refine it further, it is to have an ideal in mind, connect the three points of dormitory, training ground, and canteen into a line, and work hard. There is a widely circulated view among coaches: give athletes family leave, the road is counted (at that time, there were no planes and high-speed trains, and the whole green-skinned train was the most convenient), and half a month was fast. But it takes an average of about two months for competitive status to return to pre-line levels. Therefore, it is almost impossible for national team athletes to enjoy the annual family visit leave stipulated by the state normally.
At that time, the State Sports Commission had a loud slogan for the training work called "three from one big," that is, to proceed from difficulties, strictness, and the needs of actual combat to carry out large-scale exercise training. And further refined to "50 hours of training per week", it means that under the system of 6 days of rest per week, the average training is at least 8 hours per day. Even if there is no rest at all on Sundays, it is necessary to train for 7 hours. Of all the sports teams, perhaps only the Go team is not particularly harsh on this. As for my new tofu shop, I am even more tired and happy.
Basketball buddies
Although the teams of the Training Bureau eat the same pot of rice, they are trained separately and do not interact with each other. After 1966, the abnormal state of training opened the door for the brothers to communicate with each other. Wu Songsheng, Cao Zhilin, Qiu Xin and I became basketball partners of the national athletics women's team. They are He Zufen (sprinting), Shen Suying (sprinting), Xiao Jieping (long jump), Yang Shuxian (discus). We became friends with each other, probably because the physical fitness and skills of the Go team were too poor, and there was no "opponent" in the men's team, and several of them were the leaders in the project, and it was difficult to find a suitable opponent in the women's team. Since the training of both sides of their respective projects has entered the state of artesian flow, it is a hit. Their average age is slightly older than ours, and the sisters and brothers get along very well.
During breakfast, the canteen of the Training Bureau often stacks some knife beans on the athletes' table for everyone to help tear the tendons, spending more time, but it becomes a perfect time to play basketball at the agreed time: "Or 3 o'clock in the afternoon?" "I don't know who brought it up first. The other person replied "Good! "Even if it's an appointment. 4 on 4 If we play basketball all over the court, we can't run and occupy too much space, so we play half court. 10 points per inning, 3 to 5 innings per game, all in all singular. At that time, we still had to fight for breath and divide the winners and losers. But after the fight, I forgot, and no one remembered the total score of both sides. The impression is that the two sides are on an equal footing. If you think about it, if the score is too disparity, the interest is not so high. We play for the perfect purpose of exercising and having fun. Even if the losing party is punished to buy a cold drink, there has never been a single one - the pace of life between the two sides is different, except for playing, it is not easy to meet at any time.
When it comes to the style of play, the Go team is still a gentleman, and basically does not take the initiative to randomly rush my sister. On the contrary, the sisters were more pungent, and when they heard the crisp sound of "popping", it was probably a big slap on the sweaty back of our bare shoulders, so everyone laughed a little, no one cared, and continued to play.
Shock the soul
In the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, the only people who lived in the collective dormitory of the national Go team were Wang Runan and me. In my sleep, the screens of the house broke the curtains and fell heavily on the ground, and I was awakened and suddenly felt awake: an earthquake, a very strong earthquake. When I happened to be in Beijing when the Xingtai earthquake occurred in 1966, the earthquake occurred during the training time during the day, and after experiencing it firsthand, I naturally had some perceptual understanding of the earthquake. But this time it was much more powerful than Xingtai. I sat on the bed and looked at the watch: 4:52. Only the noise of people in the hallway was heard. I didn't have the slightest feeling of running for my life, and I even thought about whether to just get up and have an early exercise. I lay down and tried to wait until dawn. Unexpectedly, I became the only one among the hundreds of athletes in the training bureau dormitory.
Wang Runan's close-up photo by Li Mingyan
After a while, Wang Runan knocked on the door and came in: "Are you okay, are you still asleep?" Follow me! ”
"So early? It's still early for breakfast! ”
"What breakfast to eat, the teams are counting the number of people to see if there are any accidents, I can't find you everywhere, deliberately go upstairs, there are aftershocks!"
The comrades-in-arms of Runan followed the organizational arrangement and risked aftershocks to pick me up, and it was too late to thank me, let alone dissuade him. When I went downstairs, I saw that the gate was crowded, three people in a pile, a group of five people. Many of the people had a look of joy that had escaped the disaster. I heard that some female team members, don't look at the highest 5th floor, 6th floor, the escape speed is not slow, a turn over will rush down, rush downstairs only to find that each other is not dressed neatly. When someone escaped, they instinctively copied a handful of things, but when they went downstairs, they found that they had copied a napkin box or the like, and they couldn't help but look at each other and smile. At the breakfast table that day, it seemed that I heard someone at the neighboring table talking about who was on the Go team. Alternatives will always be the talking point.
Since the morning of the same day, the teams have been informed that in order to avoid the aftershocks, as far as possible, they will not enter the building, and everyone will temporarily settle in the training hall. Unexpectedly, just a day or two after I went, Hao Keqiang, the president of the new sports magazine, came to me. President Hao was the hero who later launched the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament. This hardcore chess fan wants to use this rare opportunity to play coaching chess. Where do I have this in mind? Shunkou made up: "There are aftershocks, I don't dare to go into the building to get chess pieces!" "It's okay, you give me the dorm key, I'll go in and get it!" I was speechless, overwhelmed with water, and had to play chess with me.
At dinner that day, the athletes' restaurant also distributed after-meal fruits according to the custom. It was watermelon that day. I hate to eat watermelon and make my mouth full of juice, and I always like to take it upstairs to eat, even that day. Just when I was eating watermelon in the washbasin on the 4th floor, the building was visibly shaking – and there was another earthquake! It was too late and fast, and at this moment, a loud "popping" sound came from the restaurant on the first floor. This is the loud noise caused by hundreds of people slapping chopsticks and spoons on the table in unison. Hundreds of athletes reacted extremely quickly, in unison, and completed the scene very successfully without rehearsal. I really heard it on the 4th floor. Extremely shocked, even I can't explain myself: not only can I eat the watermelon, but I also listen to yaxing who listens to the loud escape!
Canteen story
The high standard of food in the Training Bureau is easy to cause waste. Cao Zhilin, Qiu Xin and I were transferred to the national team, passed through Dezhou on the way to Beijing by train, bought a grilled chicken, and brought it to Beijing when they couldn't eat it. The food of the training bureau is good, I can't think of eating it, the child does not know how to give it to the people who need it at the first time, and the grilled chicken is moldy in a few days, and can only be thrown away. In the end, the three of us were criticized by name in the internal publications of the Training Council.
Hua Yigang (right) and Nie Weiping (left) listen to Wu Qingyuan's teachings together
In 1986, I served as the deputy team leader and team leader of the national Go team. We directly transferred a batch of good seedlings from all provinces and cities across the country, and it was at that time that a group of people represented by Chang Hao, Luo Xiehe, Shao Weigang, Qian Yuping, and Zhou Heyang were transferred in. After the squad members came, I found that their waste was more serious and there was a tendency to become more intense. They don't think about whether they can eat it, hit the dinner plate and then say, if they can't eat it, they will dump it casually, including the whole piece of pork chops, the whole chicken leg, etc., obviously to the point where it must be managed. I also thought that I was several years older than these children and fashionable and did not understand things, and management must pay attention to ways and methods to achieve results, and not let them have resistance.
Soon, a good opportunity came. The People's Daily published He Yuzheng's short-term travelogue to the Federal Republic of Germany, "Learning from Their Eating", which mentioned that the last bite of a German meal must be bread — used to wipe the juice off the plate and then eat it. I will distribute this article to everyone and let the young players write about their feelings after reading. Everyone was very excited and wrote very seriously. I was particularly pleasantly surprised by The Reading Ofch river. At that time, my comment was: "The theme is clear, the writing is fluent, there is a certain writing skill, and the vocabulary is rich." "I commend everyone for being very serious about writing articles, and then stressing the need to implement them into action. In the cafeteria, I watched closely, and the vice of wasting food was reversed, but it was not eradicated. I caught a few more typicals. Later, wherever these team members went to eat buffets were exemplary, and this good tradition was passed down from generation to generation.
The above past events may be involved in my daily conversation, but they are rarely written in public, and the topics are inevitably trivial, but they are all real people and real events that I have experienced. There are also some stories that will be told later. (Hua Yigang)