From an Olympic champion to a meritorious coach, Wang Yifu wrote the legend of the old gun. Beijing News reporter Xu Xiaofan photographed
He competed in the Olympic Games for 6 times and is the only Olympic "Six Dynasties Elder" in the Chinese sports world so far;
He dominated Athens at the age of 44 and is China's oldest Olympic gold medalist;
He holds 5 Olympic medals and is the athlete with the most Olympic medals in The Chinese shooting industry;
He was the head coach of the Chinese shooting team, and carefully trained many Olympic champions such as Pang Wei, Du Li, Yi Siling, Zhu Qinan and so on;
He is Wang Yifu, who wrote a "old gun" myth with persistence and love. "If you want to achieve superhuman results, you must pay the price of superman." This is what Wang Yifu most wants to say to the young people of today.
Wang Yifu said that the association with shooting was somewhat accidental.
Won the Minister of Arms and embarked on the firing path
"My father's comrade-in-arms Uncle Liu said, let's shoot targets with air guns, you want to win me, I will send you to the shooting team as an athlete."
Wang Yifu's "Uncle Liu" was the head of the Liaoyang Armed Forces Department at that time, in charge of the local shooting team. At that time, Wang Yifu had just turned 16 years old, and his understanding of shooting was still in the ignorant stage of "fighting sparrows and eliminating the four harms".
Unexpectedly, in this contest with the Minister of Armed Forces, Wang Yifu really won. In January 1977, Wang Yifu was recommended to enter the Liaoyang Amateur Sports School and officially received shooting training. "It was really a coincidence." Recalling the opportunity to shoot again, Wang Yifu was full of emotions.
Prior to this, Wang Yifu showed great talent and enthusiasm in shooting. Once, when he was a guest with his father at Uncle Liu's place, he was attracted by a row of rifles hanging on the wall of the armed forces department. At strong request, Wang Yifu took an air gun as he wished, and from then on, whenever he had time, he dragged his father to the village to hunt sparrows, and held the gun every night before he could sleep.
Wang Yifu recalled that when he returned the gun, he was very disappointed, "At that time, I thought how good it would be if I had a gun." Seeing that his son could not give up on the gun, the father decided to buy an air gun at the local sporting goods store as compensation. Wang Yifu recalled that the gun cost 27 yuan, which was a big expense at that time. Later, in order to save money, Wang Yifu often used lead to make his own bullets.
Fortunately, all this effort was not in vain, and Wang Yifu showed his strength less than half a year after entering the sports school. In a selection competition, Wang Yifu stood out from 3 pistol slow-fire players and was given the opportunity to represent Liaoyang in the provincial competition. In that competition, Wang Yifu won the second place, second only to a member of the provincial training team. Soon after, he once again won the second place, and Wang Yifu attracted the attention of the provincial team leaders.
At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Wang Yifu won another gold medal in shooting. Photo/Osports
Abandoned by the provincial team, determined to break the national record
"At the 1979 National Games, I won two gold medals, breaking the national record of 567 rings at that time." Recalling the glory of 40 years ago, Wang Yifu downplayed it. But he admits that breaking the national record was the first dream of his shooting career, and the failure to be selected for the provincial team for the first time accelerated the realization of this dream.
In more than 1 month of training for the provincial team, Wang Yifu performed well, even if he competed with the national team players, he did not fall behind, "At that time, I played 529 rings, which was already very good for amateur team players." However, due to the limited number of places selected for the provincial team, Wang Yifu had to temporarily return home.
"At that time, I was carrying a lot of luggage alone, and I had to walk 5 kilometers from the shooting range to the Liaoning Building, and then took a long-distance bus back to Liaoyang." On the streets of Shenyang, Wang Yifu experienced frustration for the first time, and the 5-kilometer road seemed incomparably long for the 17-year-old at the time.
"What is the national record?" This was the first sentence Wang Yifu asked the coach after returning to Liaoyang Sports School. Since then, the big characters of "Beyond 567 Rings" have been written by Wang Yifu in a notebook. At this time, he was two years away from breaking the national record at the 4th National Games. In Wang Yifu's memory, these two years can be described as hard and fulfilling. In order to have more time to hone the basic skills, he took the initiative to apply to the coach to see the gun depot, practiced every night until more than 10 o'clock and was too sleepy to go to bed, and went to class normally the next morning.
Due to the difficult conditions of the sports school at that time and the shortage of bullets, Wang Yifu could practice aiming, and he could only shoot 3 to 5 bullets per month. Raise the gun, aim, fire, repeat the action over and over again, the days pass by, and the opportunity will quietly come. In a provincial team selection in December 1977, Wang Yifu was a blockbuster and completely impressed the provincial team leaders with a score of 553 rings. On January 15, 1978, he entered the provincial team for the second time, and Wang Yifu was deeply impressed by this day.
At the 1996 Olympic Games, Wang Yifu fainted on the field.
Insisted on not being able to fly, with illness won the Olympic silver medal
Looking back at Wang Yifu's 27-year shooting career, 1996 is an important node. Before that, Wang Yifu won the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and the National Games, but injury became the most difficult opponent for his shooting career for the next 8 years.
On July 20, 1996, the Wolf Creek Shooting Range in Atlanta was silent, and the audience was waiting for Wang Yifu's final shot. But just before firing, Wang Yifu's eyes were suddenly dark, relying on the muscle memory exchanged for tens of thousands of trainings to complete the firing.
"6.5 rings!" There was an uproar. The huge advantage of 3.8 rings ahead of the second place disappeared in an instant, and Wang Yifu finally missed the opportunity to win the Olympic gold medal with a slight disadvantage of 0.1 rings. He fainted on the field and was diagnosed with a narrowing of the basal stenosis of the cervical spine that resulted in insufficient blood supply to the carotid arteries.
In fact, Wang Yifu had already fallen ill before he went to Atlanta. Recalling that experience, Wang Yifu told an unknown story to the Beijing News reporter, "At that time, I was on a United Airlines plane, and the American captain looked at my situation and said you must get off the plane." Later, I asked the interpreter to tell him that I was going to participate in the Olympic Games and could not go down, and I was responsible for myself. ”
At Wang Yifu's insistence, the captain compromised, but he demanded that Wang Yifu must be able to stand up on the spot. After listening, Wang Yifu whispered to his wife next to him: "Be sure to push me up from behind." In this way, Wang Yifu grabbed the back of the seat in front of him, and with the thrust of his wife, stood in front of the Captain of the United States for more than ten seconds.
Born in the 1960s, Wang Yifu received a heroic education from an early age. In his opinion, Atlanta ahead is the battlefield, he is a warrior, and no matter how much illness he has, he can't stop him from advancing. When he was a coach, he also asked the players, "I said that you should play the style of Chinese athletes, and the ultimate goal is to win the championship, raise the national flag, play the national anthem, and let people all over the world hear our national anthem." ”
In the first year of Wang Yifu's coaching, the Chinese shooting team won 7 of the 10 gold medals in the World Cup in Italy, "In the end, even the Italian staff will sing our national anthem." Speaking of this experience, Wang Yifu showed a satisfied smile on his face.
Introduction · Wang Yifu
Birth date: December 4, 1960
Birthplace: Liaoyang, Liaoning
career:
In early 1978, he entered the Liaoning Provincial Shooting Team, and in 1979, he was selected into the National Shooting Team;
In the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, he represented China for the first time in the Olympic Games, and won the bronze medal in the slow shooting of the self-athlete gun;
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, he dominated the 10m air pistol event and won the first Olympic gold medal of his career;
At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, he won the 10-meter air pistol championship again at the age of 44;
In 2005, he retired as the head coach of the national shooting team and the coach of the pistol team;
In 2007, he was elected the "Lifetime Shooting Champion" of the International Shooting Federation, which is the highest honor in the international shooting community.
In 2014, he was elected Vice-President of the International Shooting Federation and re-elected in 2018;
In 2017, he was elected as an expert member of the Chinese Olympic Committee.
Beijing News reporter Xu Xiaofan
Edited by Wang Chunqiu proofread by Zhang Yanjun