Once upon a time, Wang Meng was a proud "anti-Korean pioneer", and she rewrote the pattern of South Korea's long-term monopoly in short track speed skating with her amazing strength. With extraordinary talent, this girl from Heilongjiang has shown a strong interest in ice sports since she was a child.
At the age of 14, she was discovered to join the provincial team due to her outstanding performance and began her legendary career.
Who would have thought that this "ice god of war" who later became the leader in the international arena was eventually expelled from the national team repeatedly? Yes, although Wang Meng won 77 gold medals, 4 Olympic gold medals, and broke the world record 10 times, and was hailed as a hero who opened the "Meng era", the "irritable" and "unlearned" on the other side of her personality are also destined to be entangled in contradictions between her and the national team.
Such ups and downs in the course of life are really laughable. What is the reason why this sports star, who has won countless honors for the country, was finally "abandoned" by the motherland? Let us follow this in-depth report created by the well-known editor Chen Zhuqi to get a glimpse of Wang Meng's sincere and absurd legendary life.
Wang Meng had a brilliant life
Back in 2014, Wang Meng had to say goodbye to his beloved short track speed skating competition due to a serious injury with a fracture of his right ankle inside and out.
At that moment, the "God of War on Ice", who once stood out from the crowd and overpowered the Korean players, couldn't help but shed unwilling tears in his heart. Can you imagine that this high-profile sports star was ultimately blocked by such a superficial injury.
Just two years ago, Wang Meng also returned to the national team for a time and took on the position of coach, trying to pass on his years of skills and experience to the younger generations. It's a pity that when she retired, she finally chose to leave the athlete's stage and devote herself to the broader world of the entertainment industry.
With her joining, all major variety shows render Wang Meng's unique personality charm. Her bold and unscrupulous image brought endless joy and laughter to the audience.
But there are no absolutes in everything, and there will always be people who will be dissatisfied with her overly straightforward words and deeds. The long-term accumulated controversy has also invisibly affected her development prospects in the entertainment industry.
However, if we stretch our gaze forward for a few more years, we will find that Wang Meng was once in the limelight. In 2010, under the careful guidance of the new coach Li Yan, she once again reached the top podium at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, holding the gold medal and breaking the world record many times, making countless Chinese people proud.
After the game, Wang Meng personally expressed his gratitude to Li Yan in the arena, and the two seemed to have resolved the previous suspicion.
The reason for Wang Meng's expulsion
Who would have thought that in the second year after winning the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, Wang Meng was removed from the national team again. And the fuse turned out to be just a trivial matter.
The story starts with Wang Meng's vacation in Lijiang. As a national athlete, she is occasionally allowed to go out and relax.
It's a pity that one day in Lijiang, Wang Meng accidentally made some inappropriate remarks about local medical staff on the Internet, and the words were full of dissatisfaction and blame.
Although there was a reason for the incident, these straightforward words caused a lot of turmoil on the Internet and affected the local social order.
After the national team learned of this situation, they immediately made a decision and immediately recalled Wang Meng from Lijiang. But who would have thought that the willfulness of this "grumpy queen" did not stop there.
As soon as she returned to the training base, she took a group of teammates out to party and have fun, staying up all night, nearly an hour later than expected. This is already a serious violation of team rules and discipline.
In the face of such an indulgent attitude, the person in charge, Wang Chunlu, had no choice but to reprimand her in person, and the scene was quite tense for a while. The two sides were lukewarm, and eventually a physical altercation inevitably ensued.
For such a trivial matter, Wang Meng was expelled from the national team again, which made everyone cry and laugh.
When you think about it, this result is actually reasonable. It turned out that earlier, Wang Meng was once expelled because of a conflict with the new coach Li Yan.
At that time, Wang Meng originally got along well with senior coach Yi Min, which can be described as a tacit understanding. Unexpectedly, the national team was far-sighted and hired the prestigious Li Yan from overseas to return to China to coach.
Li Yan, who has a strict style and strict requirements, is in stark contrast to Wang Meng's uninhibited personality, and soon the two are difficult to reconcile.
To make matters worse, Wang Meng suspected that Yi Min's dismissal was due to Li Yan's leadership, so he worked against the new coach at every turn, blatantly ignoring the training schedule, and even more idleness and waste study at the crucial Asian Games in 2006.
Seeing that Wang Meng was abnormally abnormal in the field, she finally lost unexpectedly in the 1500m event, which made the Chinese people feel painful. Wang Meng publicly blamed Li Yan for all his faults, and the relationship between the two fell to a freezing point for a while.
This finally made the national team unbearable, and had to make the difficult decision to expel this girl with a stubborn personality again.
It seems that there is right and wrong, Wang Meng has indeed always done his own thing, and it is difficult to be institutionalized. Do you remember the first time she was removed from the national team?
It's just that after entering Beijing, she boldly invited the whole team to drink and celebrate, which caused dissatisfaction among the team's top management.
Although it is a trivial matter, the rules are rules after all, and as a newcomer, you naturally have to follow the discipline.
After being repatriated to his hometown, Wang Meng temporarily restrained himself, and a year later, he returned to the national team with his strength and started his brilliant career.
Looking back at Wang Meng's life experience, it is not difficult for us to find that individual heroism is often incompatible with the concept of collectivism, and is destined to produce contradictions and conflicts.
Looking at today's sports world, although it is no longer the era of Wang Meng, we have never given up the dream of competing for honor for the motherland on the world stage. To achieve this vision, a new generation of athletes must be able to carry on the spirit of their predecessors and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
We earnestly hope that they can understand the weight of the word "collective" better than Wang Meng. For a good athlete, individual ability alone is important, but if you ignore the overall role of the team, you will inevitably fall short in the end.
Take Wang Meng as an example, there is no doubt that she has extraordinary personal talent, but being too selfish and empty-eyed is her biggest death hole.
In contrast, we hope that the new generation of athletes will be humble and hardworking, and integrate into the atmosphere of the whole group, rather than fighting alone. You see, the contradiction between Wang Meng and Li Yan back then was largely due to the fact that their personalities were too different.
If she could have restrained her temper at the right time and accepted the new coach's arrangement with humility, she might not have fallen into the embarrassment of being removed.
Only by truly uniting, cooperating with each other, and working together can we achieve great achievements and be invincible in the world sports arena.
As the saying goes, "the gold is outside, and the defeat is in it", how outstanding a person's ability is, if you ignore the team culture, it is easy to fail. It can be said that Wang Meng's personality flaws are the root cause of the setbacks in her career.
Of course, we do not deny Wang Meng's outstanding contributions to the country in the sports arena. Looking at the entire history of China's short track speed skating, she is indeed one of the brightest stars, using her own strength to make the mainland famous overseas in this field, creating a glorious legend of the "Meng era".
However, it is a pity that her personal character flaws are too flamboyant and self-contained, which eventually becomes an insurmountable stumbling block for her. This contradiction finally accumulated and erupted in the constant conflict with the national team, and she had to unfulfilled her ambition.
In general, Wang Meng's legendary life experience is a typical example of the shortcomings between China and the United States. On the one hand, with her terrifying strength and amazing record, she wrote the most proud stroke for Chinese short track speed skating, and rewrote the pattern of this project that has been monopolized by South Korea for a long time.
With 77 gold medals, 4 Olympic gold medals, and 10 world records, she has written a glorious chapter belonging to the "Meng Era" with her practical actions.
But on the other hand, her uninhibited and empty-eyed personality is also destined to be difficult to be fully accommodated by the tightly managed national team. When individualism is incompatible with the collective interest, contradictions and conflicts are inevitable.