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National players Fu Mingxia, Guo Jingjing, He Zi, these shining stars in the diving world, have a great promoter behind them - Coach Yu Fen.
As a meritorious figure in Chinese diving, Yu Fen, the "godmother of diving", has honed the achievements of batches of proud sons in the international arena with her extraordinary teaching ability and keen vision. And this well-deserved diving champion encountered many obstacles and setbacks at the peak of his career.
Because of the contradictions and entanglements between her and her disciple Zhou Jihong, this master-apprentice grudge gradually evolved from the initial cooperation to a fierce confrontation between water and fire.
The teacher and the disciple have a deep love and move forward
Yu Fen was still an ordinary provincial team diving athlete at that time. Due to a congenital retinal problem, her athletic career did not go well and she soon had to choose to retire and become a coach.
In retrospect, the decision to give up being an athlete may have been a shackle, but at the same time, it also made Yu Fen's dazzling achievements on the road of coaching in the future.
When Yu Fen was an assistant coach in the Hubei provincial team, he discovered and began to train Zhou Jihong, a 10-year-old player at the time. Zhou Jihong, who passed through the spirit, soon bloomed under Yu Fen's careful guidance, and soon entered the Hubei Provincial Diving Team to officially worship Yu Fen as a teacher.
As Zhou Jihong gets older and more mature, his grades have also climbed. Yu Fen also officially became the main coach of the national diving team, and went to Beijing with the little apprentice to start a new journey, with high hopes.
At the Barcelona Olympics and Atlanta Olympics, Mr. Yu single-handedly brought out his apprentice Zhou Jihong, who won gold in the women's double three-meter springboard event for two consecutive years and became a rookie in the international diving arena.
With the common brilliant achievements, Yu Fen and Zhou Jihong are more closely linked. At that time, Zhou Jihong called herself "Yu Fen's daughter", and the relationship between the two teachers and disciples was extremely deep; And Yu Fen also pinned all his efforts and expectations on this promising little apprentice.
Sources of Contradictions: Misalignment of teaching philosophies
Unfortunately, the good times were short-lived, and with the end of the Atlanta Olympics, cracks began to appear in this seemingly eternal master-apprentice friendship. It all started when there was a sharp split within the national diving team for various reasons during the Olympic Games that year.
As the main coach, Yu Fen and head coach Xu Yiming broke out serious contradictions and conflicts because of differences over the team's personnel arrangements and training models.
Yu Fen adheres to her consistent concept of "combining sports and education", that is, in addition to standardized training, athletes should also be given a certain amount of time to study to ensure all-round development.
At that time, Xu Yiming advocated a strict closed management of "everything for diving", requiring athletes to devote all their energy to training. The conflict between the two teaching philosophies turned into an outright confrontation, which eventually led to Yu Fen and Xu Yiming both being forced to leave their coaching positions in the national diving team.
The two veteran coaches left their jobs in a hurry for many years, which undoubtedly brought a certain impact to China's diving industry.
The road to Tsinghua University's new camp in Finland University
Yu Fen, who was rejected by the national team, did not give up, and with the support of Peking University and Tsinghua University, she took the lead in establishing the famous "Peking University Tsinghua Diving Team".
On the basis of full cooperation with the two universities, Yu Fen has fully practiced his teaching concept of "combining sports and education" here. As a coach, she led the team not only to ensure a reasonable amount of training time every day, but also to support the team members to take a full university course, leaving them with a more relaxed space for development.
Seeing the outstanding athletes who came out of the Tsinghua diving team of Peking University later, it is not difficult to find that this targeted training model is quite effective. Among them are the later diving queen Lin Yue, as well as He Zi, Liu Xiaolu, Shi Tingmao and other domestic first-line pilots.
In this process, Yu Fen also insisted on setting up a diving elective course at Tsinghua University, aiming to provide diving experience for more ordinary students.
It can be said that, to a certain extent, Yu Fen popularized diving for primary and secondary school students and college students, and made a significant contribution to the sustainable development of China's diving industry in the future.
The contradiction between master and apprentice has escalated
During the years when he was the head coach of Tsinghua University at Peking University, Yu Fen has also been concerned about the development of the national diving team. Although she was shut out by institutional factors, she always had a desire to return to coaching the national team.
Whenever Yu Fen revealed this idea to the outside world, he was severely refuted by the camp of the national diving team led by Zhou Jihong. As time went on, the conflict between the two intensified.
The addition of a pair diving competition at the Sydney Olympics undoubtedly gave Yu Fen a glimmer of hope for a return to the national team. As the leader of the double diving project, she and Zhou Jihong had to work together, but the-for-tat contradiction between the two has always been turbulent.
More crucially, there are irreconcilable differences between the two sides on the coaching philosophy. As the leader of the national team at that time, Zhou Jihong simply and neatly pursued the concept of "diving first" and implemented strict closed management of athletes.
On the contrary, Yu Fen has always insisted on attaching equal importance to sports and education, and this difference in concepts has invisibly exacerbated the disobedient relationship between the two sides. As the results of the Tsinghua diving team continue to climb, Yu Fen has repeatedly publicly stated that if her disciples cannot enter the national team through formal channels, they may consider leading the team to train abroad.
And this statement was quickly poured cold water by Zhou Jihong on the national diving team. Since then, Yu Fen has expressed her desire to return to the national team through various channels several times, but was stopped by Zhou Jihong.
When Yu Fen applied again, Zhou Jihong directly released cruel words - if Yu Fen really returned to the national team to coach, she would leave this position without hesitation. The contradiction between the two sides was finally completely detonated in this year, and since then, the master and apprentice have broken off their righteousness, and the road has been placed on the top of Zhongnan and Kunlun.
Behind the fierce struggle of interests
Although it is true that there is a difference in philosophy and belief, there is a big gap between the two people's understanding of how to effectively train athletes. But the deeper reason may lie in Zhou Jihong's reluctance to lose his position and power within the national diving team.
Once Yu Fen rejoins, the two may inevitably fall into the predicament of falling into each other's predicament, and Zhou Jihong will not be able to monopolize power at that time. The contradiction between Yu Fen and Zhou Jihong also reflects the interest game within the Chinese sports system to a certain extent.
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