champion!
On the afternoon of August 31, in the final of the T1-2 level of the men's individual time trial of road cycling at the Tokyo Paralympic Games, Jiangmen's Chen Jianxin won the championship with a time of 25:00.32. This is the first gold medal won by a Jiangmen athlete at the Paralympic Games.
Chen Jianxin in the competition. Screenshot of the central video
In Chen Jianxin's hometown, Xinfeng Village, Muzhou Town, Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, a family left a message to their son through WeChat to wish. Her mother, Liang Yue, was so motion sick that she had never been abroad, and she couldn't tell whether these races were mixed or not, and she only knew that her son represented China in the Paralympic Games, a game that was very strong in the world.
I've been an athlete for 17 years. Chen Jianxin had more than once sighed with Liang Yue, who could have imagined that the cerebral palsy patient who stumbled even walking would become an athlete and even join the national team. From being excavated by the coach of the municipal sports school at the age of 18, Chen Jianxin experienced a replacement project, an injury hospitalization, and a decline in physical fitness, and finally gritted his teeth and insisted, waiting for the moment of harvest. The hardships and heartache experienced by the family over the years are hidden in a sentence that Liang Yuehao muttered to himself: "Finally survived."
Life has no if, Chen Jianxin can not imagine, if there is no sports, his life today would be like. But perhaps, his path could have been easier.
Cerebral palsy, top students
In 1986, Chen Jianxin was born into a family of yan family, and his father Chen Zhaowen and mother Liang Yuehao contracted a fish pond in the village to raise loach and shrimp to make money. From the day the child was born, they sensed something different.
"His neck is so soft he can't hold it up." In order to treat their son's illness, the couple went north to Guangzhou many times to seek medical treatment. However, the child took the medicine for several years and still did not get better, and finally only in exchange for the doctor shook his head and sighed. They had to accept the fact that the child's severe cerebral palsy due to lack of oxygen could not be completely cured.
Fortunately, in addition to the movement disorder and language disorder, Chen Jianxin's intelligence was not affected.
When he grew up, Chen Jianxin took on the responsibility of taking care of his sister and younger brother, and his parents could eat hot meals every day when they returned from the fish pond. Like all the elder brothers in the countryside, he took care of the chores of the family—except that every movement was accompanied by a violent shaking of the body and the strange gaze of others.
At the age of 13, Chen Jianxin was admitted to the town's junior high school. At that time, the school would divide outstanding students into the top class every year according to the test results, and Chen Jianxin was selected for three consecutive years. During that time, he taught himself to ride a bicycle.
Chen Jianxin. Respondents provided
However, excellent academic performance did not drive him to continue his studies, and the discomfort of sitting in school for a long time, the inferiority of being ridiculed in a strange posture, made him retreat. As a young man, he seemed to understand his fate: no matter how good he could get in the test, he would never be able to study, take the college entrance examination, and get employment like a normal person, and "no one would ask me to work."
With the permission of his parents, Chen Jianxin chose to drop out of school after graduating from junior high school to help the family run a fish pond. He thought, taking care of his family, farming in the pond, like all the family members, is also very good. Unexpectedly, the turning point of fate came two years later.
In 2004, the Jiangmen Disabled Persons' Federation (hereinafter referred to as the "Jiangmen Disabled Persons' Federation") went to each municipality to select talents and prepare for the quadrennial Provincial Paralympic Games. Limited by the shortage of grass-roots sports venues, sports equipment and coaching teams, disabled athletes rarely train intensively for a long time, often starting training before the competition, and even selecting talents.
"He walked left and right, and he couldn't even walk in a straight line." Ruan Meilan, head of the comprehensive section of the Jiangmen Disabled Persons' Federation, still remembers the scene of seeing Chen Jianxin for the first time. Perhaps thanks to the physical work of the fish pond, despite the instability, Chen Jianxin's physical condition still made him stand out, and he was caught by the enlightenment coach Tan Jianqiu at a glance, "This child is suitable for sports."
Chen Jianxin seized this opportunity to find another way out of life. He was 18 years old.
Injuries, podiums
When he first entered the city team, Chen Jianxin tried many sports, running, football, cycling, and the most practiced was running. For cerebral palsy athletes, the balance of the body is a difficult problem, and even more so for cerebral palsy track and field athletes.
Falling down is what Chen Jianxin is most afraid of, but cannot avoid. Cerebral palsy patients have difficulty controlling their bodies, and in the very short time before falling to the ground, they cannot quickly support their bodies with their elbows and arms like normal people, and can only let their faces, collarbones, and shoulders fall heavily on the rubber particle runway. Abrasions and bleeding are the norm, and what is more dangerous is that once the head is injured, the consequences are unimaginable.
Knowing the danger, Chen Jianxin still insisted on participating in the training every day. Start at 8:30 a.m., practice running 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, and 800 meters, and run 5-10 laps in the playground in one morning. In the afternoon, technical training, starting, sprinting, physical fitness, flexibility, until the sun goes down. High-intensity training is obviously laborious for people with disabilities. Because of the huge intensity of exercise, Chen Jianxin often could not eat after training and fell into stomach diseases. The 10 newcomers who joined the team with him left one after another, and soon he was the only one left.
In the city team, everyone likes to call him "new brother". First, because others are good-natured, always take care of others like a big brother, and because he trains hard, everyone admires him. These members are often seen as "outliers" on the outside, and passers-by avoid them, while here they live together like extended families day and night.
In the eyes of outsiders, Chen Jianxin is optimistic, positive and able to endure hardships. But in fact, he did not think of giving up.
He once went home with a wound on his body and offered the idea to his mother, but was severely rejected. "After insisting on it for so long, do you now go home and continue to raise fish and watch the sky eat?" He listened to his mother and stayed —in fact, in Chen Jianxin's hometown, the income from fish farming is not low.
In August 2005, the coach of the Guangdong Provincial Disabled Bicycle Team went to Jiangmen to select talents and selected 5 talents, and Chen Jianxin was listed. He entered the provincial team from the city team, focusing on bicycles and starting the road to chase the wind.
In the cycling project, Chen Jianxin's sports disability was rated T1, indicating that the disability was serious. At the Guangdong Provincial Bicycle Training Base for the Disabled in Meizhou, Chen Jianxin completes more than 120 kilometers of high-intensity training every day. The speed of the bike is faster than running, which means that when you fall, you may suffer more serious injuries. Chen Jianxin's shoulders, because of years of bruises, healing, and re-abrasions, grew cocoons.
Chen Jianxin has won medals over the years. Photo by Li Yiying
Good results come quickly. After 7 months of training, he stood on the podium of the bicycle project of the 7th National Paralympic Games and pocketed 1 silver and 1 bronze with a prize of 80,000 yuan. He was excited: "I got the first pot of gold in my life!"
Sports, a new life
Chen Jianxin said that his physical condition is not as good as his teammates, "but the more sweat and more blood I shed, I can be faster than them." He often lost sleep until late at night, and the next day he was in poor spirits and insisted on completing high-intensity training. In 2008, he once suspended training due to stomach problems, and the provincial team leader regretted his talent and went to his home to ask him to return to the field. Injuries became commonplace, and on the worst occasion, he fell to the back of his head and spent a week in the hospital.
"Only by resisting can life be changed." With this stubbornness, he got a ticket to the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
On August 19, Chen Jianxin accompanied the team to the Paralympic Games. Before boarding, he sent a circle of friends with the text: "Ready to leave Tokyo, the dream journey officially begins!" Like all athletes, he used this world sporting event as a stage of dreams.
In the face of the new crown epidemic, Chen Jianxin only returned home 3 times in the preparation process of the past two years, and even the Spring Festival was not reunited with his family. What made him feel most sorry and guilty was that he missed the growth of his daughter Xinxin.
In 2018, Chen Jianxin traveled with the team on a business trip, and by chance, the Yunnan owner of the hotel introduced his sister Du Xiaoling, who suffered from cerebral palsy, to him. The two felt sorry for each other and soon became lovers and couples. The next year, Shin Shin was born, and she was very healthy.
Chen Jianxin and Du Xiaoling felt sorry for each other and married each other. Respondents provided
In Xinfeng Village, Chen Jianxin's father and uncle jointly built a house with three floors. The living room on the second floor is Shin Shin's amusement park, and the toys are placed on the ground. She is the "pistachio" of the family, and the dinner time of the whole family is advanced because of her, just so that after the meal, she can take her out for a ride and ride a bicycle early.
Shin Shin is the "pistachio" in the family. Photo by Li Yiying
Du Xiaoling is a thin and quiet person, perhaps because of the language barrier - she does not speak Cantonese, the second elder does not know Mandarin, and rarely speaks. After two years in Guangdong from Yunnan, she can barely understand some Cantonese and is also adapting to three meals without chili peppers. She has also practiced cycling for a period of time, and once won the second place in the 10th National Paracycle Tricycle T2 Class Individual Timing and the Tricycle T2 Class Women's Group Championship.
Chen Jianxin calls his wife on video almost every night to see his daughter and Lala is homely. In order to "observe" his son's recent situation, the second elder's Mandarin listening level has improved slightly. When bored, Liang Yuehao also likes to play with mobile phones, and she will look through her son's circle of friends and relive some highlight moments.
At the 10th National Paralympic Games in 2018, Chen Jianxin won two gold medals in the 10 km individual time trial and the 25 km highway group race. Subsequently, he was selected for the national team. In 2019, he won his first world championship at the Canadian Para Cycling Road World Cup, and the certificate was placed in the center of the living room of his home. Less than a month later, he was on the podium at the UCI Para Bike Road World Championships in the Netherlands.
Liang Yuehao put his son's medals and certificates in the highest cabinet. Photo by Li Yiying
Up to now, Chen Jianxin has won 4 gold medals and 3 silver medals in world-class competitions, 5 gold medals and 1 silver medal in national competitions. The medals were placed in the highest cabinet in the living room of the home, in mooncake boxes.
Sports gave him a new life, he had an income, he had self-confidence, and he no longer stumbled when walking.
"You're 35 years old, why are you still insisting?"
"Because I can still get the gold medal."
"Why do you like to ride a bike?"
"Because it can reflect the value of my life."
"Have you ever thought about what you're going to do after you retire?"
"Do some business, don't want to rely on the disabled federation arrangement." As long as you are diligent, there is nothing that cannot be done. ”
EDIT: Empty
Source: South+