To prevent getting lost, the elevator goes directly to the safety island to report Liu Yadong A
Source: Zhenghe Island
Author: One centimeter
On the evening of July 30, the Chinese team combination Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin defeated the North Korean team Lee Jung-sik and Kim Qin-young 4:2 to win the championship in the table tennis mixed doubles of the Paris Olympics!
This is not only the first gold medal of the Chinese table tennis team in this Olympic Games, but also the first mixed doubles Olympic gold medal won by the national table tennis.
At the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen lost 3:4 to Japan's Mizutani Hayabusa and Ito Mimako, making mixed doubles the only event in national table tennis to lose gold.
Three years later, the "Shatou" combination of Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin made up for this regret for the national table tennis and defended the honor of the world's No. 1 mixed doubles.
Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin are both "post-00s", and they show the strength and style of the young generation in Chinese sports. And behind the championship, it is inseparable from their sweat and hard work day and night.
With a 4 buckle racket, hit the world champion!
Sun Yingsha in the "Shatou" group is called "Little Devil" by netizens, in recent years, her momentum has become more and more fierce, and she debuted at the peak in 2017, winning the ITTF Japan Open championship and women's doubles championship, becoming the first post-00 player to win the women's singles championship of the World Table Tennis Championships in 2023, and winning the women's singles and women's doubles championships of the WTT Women's Finals.
Li Falcon, the head coach of national table tennis, believes that Sun Yingsha's playing style is very similar to that of the "big devil" Zhang Yining, and the "big devil" Zhang Yining once commented that she is "an irreproducible player".
As for whether she can become the new "big devil" of the world women's table tennis, Sun Yingsha said that her predecessors and players are worth learning from herself, and she just wants to be the best version of herself.
1. Talent and parental support
On November 4, 2000, Sun Yingsha was born in an ordinary middle-class family in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province.
Because she was too busy with work, Sun Yingsha's parents enrolled her in a table tennis class, which could not only exercise her body, but also have someone to take care of her after school.
It's just that I didn't expect that this hosting would give rise to a future world champion.
The racket used by Sun Yingsha for the first time in class was bought casually at the school gate and only cost 4 yuan. Later, Sun Yingsha played well, and her parents changed her racket for more than ten yuan.
Sun Yingsha went to the table tennis training ground of Heping West Road Primary School in Shijiazhuang City, which is known as the cultivation base for table tennis talents in Hebei Province.
At that time, Sun Yingsha, who was about the same height as the table, had a very high passion for table tennis, she had no other hobbies, only focused on completing the training tasks assigned by the coach, and always took the initiative to ask for extra practice.
After each training session, Sun Yingsha would refill the basin and never slacked off.
When she was in elementary school, Sun Yingsha's mother sometimes helped her pick up balls, and every time her mother picked them up, she had to stack a few more on top of them, and she had to carry a few more in her pocket after stacking.
When she was eight or nine years old, there was no opponent for her peers, so the coach arranged for her to fight with adults, and Sun Yingsha was very happy about this.
At the age of 10, Sun Yingsha was selected for the Hebei Provincial Team and received more systematic and professional training.
When she was a child, Sun Yingsha had a good academic performance, and in order not to delay her studies, when she was training in the provincial team, she did not live in the school like everyone else, but chose to go to school.
She wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to go back and forth between school and the training grounds, and over the years, no matter how rainy or windy, Sun Yingsha's father has consistently picked her up to play and study.
2. Relentless efforts
It is often said that sports competition is a game that requires the dual blessing of talent and hard work, and Sun Yingsha has the former, but spends more time on the latter.
Since joining the provincial team to train, Sun Yingsha also has the desire to enter the national team and become a Grand Slam player. Since then, Sun Yingsha has begun to travel around the country to participate in one competition after another.
In addition to her innate extraordinary talent, she also trains hard to match, even if she is sick and has a fever.
Sometimes the players who practice with her are not concentrating and make many mistakes, and before the coach reminds her, she will tell the opponent, "You have to help me defend this ball", or tell the opponent where to defend.
After training in the provincial team for about a year, she became the only candidate for the championship in the team, and she was the first main force to compete on behalf of the province.
In 2015, Sun Yingsha won the women's singles championship of the National Junior Championships, and then entered the national second team.
The coach said that Sun Yingsha is a very simple child, her mind is almost all devoted to playing, few other things can interfere with her, and she is also very talented in playing, and her awareness and understanding are very good.
In less than a year and a half, that is, at the beginning of 2017, 16-year-old Sun Yingsha entered the national first team through the lifting competition of the first and second teams.
At the 2017 Asian Table Tennis Championships, Miu Hirano, who was only 17 years old at the time, defeated three top Chinese players Ding Ning, Zhu Yuling and Chen Meng in a row.
This incident was even selected as one of the top ten news in the international sports world in 2017, and domestic public opinion was in an uproar. This also made the national table tennis begin to pay more attention to the cultivation of reserve talents.
In this context, at the Japan Open qualifying tournament, the women's table tennis team sent an extremely young team to compete for the qualification of the main event, and Sun Yingsha was one of them.
She broke into the women's singles final all the way, and when she fell behind Chen Meng with a big score of 1:3, Sun Yingsha finally turned the tables 4:3 against the wind and won the championship in one fell swoop.
Coupled with the women's doubles championship won by Chen Xingtong before, Sun Yingsha won the double championship in one fell swoop, shocking the entire table tennis world. As a result, she became the biggest dark horse of the Japan Open. The Japan media shouted that there is a new monster in the Ping Pong Kingdom.
Then in the Chengdu battle of the China Open, Sun Yingsha kept a clean sheet of 4:0 against her opponent.
With her outstanding performance in the two Open Championships, in July 2017, Sun Yingsha shouldered an important mission and led the Chinese youth team to participate in the Asian Youth Championships, successfully winning the women's singles, women's doubles, mixed doubles and team championships.
In just 21 days, Sun Yingsha has jumped from no international points and no international ranking to the tenth player in the world.
Behind these achievements is Sun Yingsha's countless hard training and unremitting efforts.
Due to holding the racket for a long time, her fingers have been deformed and calloused, and her nails are often bruised and blackened by hitting the table, and her calves are also in a state of bruising all year round, because she needs to stomp her feet to exert force when serving.
3. Don't be defeated by failure
2018 was the darkest time of Sun Yingsha's career:
At the Germany Open, she lost to Zheng Yijing, and coach Huang Haicheng turned around and left;
At the China Open, she lost to Japan's Yuki Hamamoto, the only time in her career that she was eliminated in the first round;
At the Hong Kong Open, she lost to Liu Shiwen again, and coach Huang Haicheng was angry again, leaving her alone in the court.
However, even at such a low point in her life, Sun Yingsha's sense of responsibility for the team still drove her to perform well in the doubles event. She won gold at both the World Junior Championships and the Youth Olympic Games.
In the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Sun Yingsha represented the country and successfully won the gold medal in the women's team, becoming the only post-00 Olympic champion in the Chinese table tennis industry so far.
This is also her first time participating in the Olympic Games, but she has a calmness beyond her age and experience, she does not speak much, almost expressionless, often the audience is shocked, but she is not shocked.
In the semi-finals, facing Misei Ito, who was in the limelight, she fell behind first, chased eight goals in a row, staged a "human rattan piece", and became famous.
For Sun Yingsha, this is also a battle of special significance in her career, fully demonstrating her ability to withstand pressure and excellent psychological quality at critical moments.
After the race, she said, "I hope I can start from scratch, forget all my previous achievements and focus on my goals." ”
Indeed, after each game is a new beginning, and she has to fight game by game, game by game.
Because of the sudden resignation of head coach Huang Haicheng, Sun Yingsha will not have a head coach in 2021. But she never complains, and is still able to watch videos consciously, train and pick up the ball alone, and ride the car to various places to play alone.
Because she won the runner-up in many competitions such as the Table Tennis Super League and the National Games, Sun Yingsha was called "Da Manya" and "the second millennium" by some netizens.
But in 2022, Sun Yingsha once again showed amazing competitive strength:
At the Team World Table Tennis Championships held in Chengdu, she helped the Chinese team achieve the feat of five consecutive championships for the women's team;
At the Macau Championship, she defeated Chen Xingtong with a score of 4:1 in the final;
In the Xinxiang World Cup final, she narrowly defeated teammate Chen Meng with a score of 4:3;
At the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban, Sun Yingsha became the first post-00 player to win the women's singles championship at the World Table Tennis Championships;
In the Busan team final, in the face of consecutive losses by her teammates, she stepped up again and defeated Japan 3:2 to achieve the sixth consecutive championship in the World Table Tennis Championships.
In 2023, Sun Yingsha is undoubtedly one of the best female table tennis athletes. Won the WTT Grand Slam Women's Singles, Women's Doubles and Mixed Doubles Triple Crown; Women's singles and mixed doubles champions at the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban; won three championships in women's singles, mixed doubles and team at the Hangzhou Asian Games; Women's Singles and Women's Doubles champions at the WTT Women's Finals.
"When you're really hungry for a championship, you don't feel like you're playing too much, you don't feel tired," she said. ”
If she can win gold at the Paris Olympics, Sun Yingsha will not only become the 11th Grand Slam winner in history, but also creatively become the first post-00 Grand Slam player in the international table tennis world.
Now that she's in the round of 16, we're looking forward to seeing what she does next.
"Shatou" combination: young and strong
The first time the "Shatou" group appeared in the public eye was at the 2017 Asian Junior Table Tennis Championships. Wang Chuqin's nickname is "Big Head", and with the word "Sha" in Sun Yingsha's name, he is affectionately called the "Shatou" combination by netizens.
This domineering-sounding name really fits their performance on the field, such as the Asian Youth Championships, Jakarta Asian Games, Youth Olympic Games, World Table Tennis Championships, Hangzhou Asian Games, Paris Olympics, ......
Along the way, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha proved themselves by winning the championship.
Behind the mixed doubles gold medal at the Olympics is the hard work of Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha over the past three years.
The Tokyo 2021 Olympics was the first time that the mixed doubles table tennis competition entered the Olympic Games.
With no championship experience, no second Chinese pair, and no way out, Wang Chuqin described himself and Sun Yingsha as lonely warriors in the mixed doubles event:
"We have to hold the belief that we will win, be a lone brave, and attack this championship, not to protect it, because we have not won this championship, we have no successful experience, and I hope we can achieve a breakthrough in this project."
In order to get the mixed doubles gold medal, Wang Chuqin even said that he was "willing to pay the price of his life", in his daily training, he put 890% of his energy into mixed doubles, and he can only practice singles and men's doubles when he completes all the training in mixed doubles.
At the same time, he is also constantly "squeezing" himself, from six in the morning to ten in the evening, Wang Chuqin has maintained the training intensity for two years.
"I hope to make myself a little more painful, because when I feel that I am okay, it is easy to drift, and my mind will relax, so I hope that I can always maintain a painful emotional face of training."
Sun Yingsha, who also wears three roles, is also constantly pressuring herself in the preparation process: "Only when the pressure that is usually exerted on ourselves exceeds the pressure brought by the Olympic opponents, can the two of us get used to and adapt to the Olympic arena." ”
Under pressure, the "Shatou" combination relieved each other's pressure and encouraged each other on and off the court.
Wang Chuqin said: "If she loses one, I will say, 'It's okay, just take it,' and if I lose one, she will say, 'It's okay, if it doesn't work, lower the quality and go to power first.'" ”
Sun Yingsha will also encourage Wang Chuqin in training and competitions: "It's okay, you don't have to rush to score, it's no problem for me to carry the boy's ball, you can rest assured that you can pick it up casually, I can help you carry it." ”
From the 2017 Asian Youth Championships to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the "Shatou" combination has become more and more tacit in the eight years of running-in. Sun Yingsha described the two as partners as a kind of fate: "Wang Chuqin is the left hand, and I am the right hand, from a natural point of view, it is a kind of fate." ”
What is even more rare than tacit understanding and fate is that in the past Paris Olympic cycle, the two have always grown up at the same frequency.
In 2023, Sun Yingsha won 7 women's singles titles, including the three highest-scoring major championships: Singapore Grand Slam, Durban World Table Tennis Championships, and Nagoya Women's Finals.
And Wang Chuqin will also ascend to the men's singles world No. 1 position for the first time in 2023, becoming the first "post-00" men's singles world No. 1 in history, and then collected men's singles, men's doubles, mixed doubles and team gold medals at the Hangzhou Asian Games, becoming the first men's "Golden Slam" in the history of the Asian Games.
As a result, the two became the only pair in the history of national table tennis to wear three pairs.
At the WTT Championship in Macau and the WTT World Cup Finals in Xinxiang, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha both won the championship and met at the top.
In addition to their technical skills, the psychological level of the "Shatou" combination has also become more and more mature, and both of them have become more responsible and can take the initiative to shoulder the heavy responsibility of mixed doubles.
"Before, we were more about the icing on the cake, but now we want to take on the big task and carry more things." "The mixed doubles competition will not be as easy as before, and now it will be more difficult, but we feel that this is the only way to test our true level," Wang said. ”
After winning the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, Wang Chuqin once again expressed similar thoughts, saying: "This time I feel that the two of us have taken on more responsibilities and the pressure is greater. Because the mixed doubles is a separate Olympic gold medal, every team attaches great importance to it, and we can only stand out if we keep working hard and pursuing higher goals. ”
In this way, the "Shatou" combination completed its transformation step by step, not only regaining honor for national table tennis at the Paris Olympics, but also consolidating its position as the world's No. 1.
For Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha, they are in their prime, and there are more championship honors waiting for them to fight for.
"As long as you work hard, you will succeed,
It's actually a kind of arrogance."
Time flies, and it's another summer with Olympics to watch.
Diving star Shi Tingmao once said: "It is not the gold medal that makes people strong, but the road to the gold medal." ”
Watching the Olympics, it is not only the gold medal that makes us enthusiastic. It is the love of everyone on the road to the struggle.
That kind of charm goes beyond winning or losing.
In the eyes of the public, table tennis is the glory of the national sport and "no suspense". Netizens are talking about how we "abuse" our opponents and how clumsy our "handicap" acting skills are.
But for those who play, no victory is easy.
Screenshot of "Strong Wind Blowing".
Liu Guoliang said that at least one or two games in the Olympic Games are balls that will escape from death.
At the London Olympics, Zhang Jike defeated Samnosov 4:3; In the Rio Olympics, Ma Long defeated Zheng Rongzhi 4:2; In the Tokyo Olympics, Fan Zhendong defeated Lin Yunru 4:3 and Ma Long defeated Ocharov 4:3, both of which were "escaped from death".
The Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships in 2022, the Chengdu Mixed Team in 2023, and the Busan World Table Tennis Championships in 2024, the national table tennis has all encountered a desperate situation, and the opponent is fierce.
CCTV commentator Gao Han once said, "The real strong man is not how to win in good times, but how to carry it in bad times." ”
Two days ago, after "Shatou" won the mixed doubles quarterfinals, Gao Han said: "The Chinese team's road to winning the championship has never been as easy as everyone thinks. Liu Guozheng, who commented together, instructed and added, "I came back from the hard work one by one."
As Wang Chuqin said: "I think one of the best traditions of the Chinese team is to always let yourself be full of uncertainty and pressure. He will have the confidence to try to win the championship, but he will not think from the beginning that this championship is stable. This is the fine inheritance from generation to generation. ”
As said in "The Strong Wind Blows": "As long as you work hard, you will definitely succeed, which is actually a kind of arrogance." ”
True success often comes from the love and persistent pursuit of the cause. For the "Shatou" group, they interpret "love what you do, and success will follow".
It is true that the gold medal, as one of the highest honors in the competition, is envied and attracted much attention by everyone.
However, the Olympic spirit has never only won or lost, and every athlete who persists and works hard deserves our respect.
(Intern Cao Buhua also contributed to this article)
References:[1]. "She used a 4-dollar racket to win the world championship!" 》Physical Fitness Brave Talk 1
[2]. "Tokyo's Missed Gold Medal, "Shatou" Recaptured! "People's Entertainment
[3]. The Sixth Gold! The mixed doubles title is back! It is worthy of the surging news of "Shatou".