The interview was at 8 o'clock on the eve of Singles' Day. This atmosphere of materialism is as strange as a strange world to Pan Zhanle, and he can't even recall the last time the act of "buying" appeared in his life. 8 o'clock in the evening, it means the end of a day's training, the whole person has come to the critical point of exhaustion, familiar and reassuring, the body has reached this step, indicating that today's training is sufficient and of sufficient quality, followed by treatment and massage, sleep well, meet the next day's training, and repeat.
He's wrapping up a small cycle, with three and a half weeks of strength training over and two or three days to adjust to his rhythm — a shoulder injury that started in September has made him less comfortable lately. In the interview, his tone is calm, his voice is very soft, he has the straightforwardness of the new generation, and he hopes to express it truthfully, all of which shows the attitude of a 19-year-old boy who is full of vitality and facing the world, just like the finger "Z" he designed for himself, which not only represents the initials of his name "Zhanle", but also the meaning of "winning the championship", which is concise and full of vitality.
After a few conversations, you can feel that he is in a state where he is so busy that he has to live 25 hours a day, and he has no time to turn his perspective to the past and immerse himself in his achievements.
"The next step is to break the world record and win the Paris Olympics. "There is no world record, and it is not worthy of being called China Flying Fish. After the Asian Games, his two short and powerful speeches spread quickly, and the young hero's spirit was the most inspiring. It's just that he soon became keenly aware that some words were cracked into vows, as if he was suddenly going to swim with the burden of shame.
In fact, this goal came a little early for Pan Zhanle. Usually the golden age of a 100m freestyle athlete is 23 to 24 years old, and his physical function is at its peak, but Pan Zhanle is only 19 years old now, and even he himself never thought he could swim so fast. His screen name was "The Stand Spectator", which he got around during the 2021 World Short Course Championships, when he was mostly sitting in the stands. Unexpectedly, he hasn't watched the game from the stands since then.
After breaking the Asian record one after another, the attention of the outside world has been directed to next year's Paris Olympics. He himself kept an eye on it and circled two dates early, one was July 30, 2024, which was his best 100m freestyle event, and the other was August 4, when the men's 4x100 medley was held, which happened to be his 20th birthday, "This is the most promising day for the Chinese swimming team to win gold." The idea was born at the World Championships in Fukuoka in July in the men's 4x100 medley, where he stepped on Coldplay's song "Viva La Vida" (Long live life) and withstood the pressure to beat Australia and win the gold medal with his teammates. After the game, the microphone of the foreign media reached out. "I'm thinking, what if I have to go up and speak English well in the future?"
is young, and the people around him generally call him Xiao Pan, and some team members joke about him as Team Pan, and many fans call him that. What do non-swimmers call him?" "There are no such friends, my friends are all swimmers. He replied crisply, "The only thing they can talk to me about is swimming, because I don't know anything but swimming." ”
Indeed, when it comes to swimming, you can clearly feel the existence of his communication and enthusiasm, even if it is a problem that is out of tune. "I want to increase my arm span by 10 centimeters. I did my research in May last year and found that many of the top athletes in the 100-meter freestyle event have an arm span of 2 meters or more. Popovich (Romanian and world record holder in the 100m freestyle) has an arm span of 2.05m when he is 1.9m tall. But I'm 1.92 meters tall and my arm span is only 190, which is not as long as our coach. ”
In order to keep an eye on the goal, Pan Zhanle's life cut down side branches, leaving only the backbone of training, showing an ascetic-like appearance in terms of time, space, and personal feelings. In the vertical direction of time, in the past 15 years, he has "basically been in the water"; horizontally, he has almost the same three-stage pattern every day, eating breakfast and swimming in the morning, eating lunch, taking a nap and swimming in the afternoon, and eating dinner, therapeutic massage, and resting in the evening. "Everything in life except for training, rest, eating and relaxing, is all about preparing for the next day's training. Every day is no different, and the morning is no different from the afternoon. ”
His agent observed a Xi in him. During training, after each swim, the coach will say that he will take a 5-second break and then start preparing. Every time, Xiao Pan pressed the coach's departure order and left. If it was me, I was very tired, and the coach said to rest for 5 seconds, then I would definitely have to hear every word fall on the ground before starting, but he didn't, basically I heard the coach say that he moved when he was ready, and when the coach said to go, he had already rushed out. ”
In the interview, he did not mention the current world record of 46.86 seconds, but pointed to 46.16 seconds. On the wall of the training hall, the results of each Olympic championship are pasted, and the four stages of the 100-meter freestyle competition, the starting time of 15 meters, the turning time of 15 meters, the middle swim and the sprint, the best results in human history, these four sections are listed. This is a set of numbers that Pan Zhanle can see every day. Theoretically, the added 46.16 seconds is the limit of what a person can achieve. "My time this year is 46.97 seconds. The fastest midway trip in the world was mine, but the difference between the start time and the world's best time was 0.4, the turn was 0.2, and the side difference was 0.1. It can be improved everywhere. "It takes 0.2-0.4 seconds for a human to blink. His goal is to shorten the time it takes to blink twice.
The shorter the distance, the more detailed. For each competition, the national team researchers will record his video, and then slow it down frame by frame to check which actions can be improved, from time to technology, and zoom in on the research. Pan Zhanle has seen his performance frame by frame, and as for how to find a way to correct it in the water, it is all up to him. This means that every time you train, your attention muscles must be tense at all times, with a constant patience and interest in subtle changes and subtle differences in technique. The timeline goes on and on, but the inside of the days can't be a mechanical copy, but like a flippage. With such a huge investment, he often felt as if the day was coming to an end after lunch.
From August last year to now, he has only been home once, and the cat he raised has grown up and changed his name, treating him as a guest at the hostel, and they share each other. In addition to his time, he spends his time at the swimming pool, rehabilitation center, canteen and dormitory. Closing his eyes, he thought of the ceiling, a monotonous white. He did not hide the "tiredness" brought by boredom and hard work, and he looked forward to one day waking up naturally and going to the park to see the flowers and grass. The day's shoots went fast and smoothly, with Louis Vuitton on trend, Burberry on the go, and Bottega Veneta in need of a bit of detachment...... He quickly learned how to "communicate" and "perform" different styles of the latest fashion with the cameraman's lens, so the whole shoot was completed quite a little earlier. At the end of the shoot, he wore his last outdoor-style Zegna outdoor-style outfit and the brand's Triple Stitch luxury casual shoes, stepped on the green lawn in the studio, and beckoned the team to take a group photo. Perhaps, Pan Zhanle enjoyed the moment more than he expected.
He denied that he had lost his childhood because of his swimming training, and instead had fun just swimming in that time. "When I was a child, I was very well-behaved, I didn't understand anything, I thought that as long as I swam, I was a champion, so I kept swimming. Now, I'm thinking about how to win the championship. It sounds like a few words in a different place, but it's actually very different. The test became much more complicated, two or three weeks ago he dreamed that he had lost in Paris and woke up feeling lucky that it was still 2023. He realized that he had to do his best, and he also had to liberate himself from doing his best to reach "it" - "When I was a child, I swam with a very strong light ahead, even if you don't want to make it a goal, I feel that there is still a long way to go." But now, I'm almost at the end of the road. What does it mean that time waits for no one, next year is the Olympic Games, it does not wait for me. ”
What exactly is "it"? It is a gold medal, a world record, the joy of swimming, and the light of the future that cannot be said yet.
摄影 Edwin Zhang
Interview and writing by RenaC
Editor, styling Elva
Hairstyle Tao Liu
Makeup Yin
Art Mia
Assistant Alata