In 1984, Los Angeles participated in the Olympic Games for the first time after the founding of new China.
At that time, Zhu Jianhua, a 21-year-old high jumper, went out with the team with the achievement of "three brushes world record" and became a prominent figure in the athletics field, and was pinned on high hopes.
However, he played abnormally during the game, winning only one bronze medal. After "only winning the bronze medal", he was criticized and even received a blade that was sent.
37 years have passed.
The time comes to 2021.
Zhu Jianhua once sighed that the audience saw only the crossbar in their eyes (at that time), jumped over them happy, and could not jump over them to throw soda bottles.
The experiences of Zhu Jianhua, Li Ning and even Liu Xiang are not unique, and there are many examples of putting invisible gold medals on players before the game and pushing them off the altar after the game.
But today's audiences are still proud of winning gold, but they are no longer "ashamed" of losing gold.
From Zhu Jianhua's blade to Su Bingtian's medal, the change in the concept of athletes is a mirror, reflecting the maturity of sports culture and even social culture, and the driving force of spiritual maturity is inseparable from the self-confidence brought by social development and the heroic arrogance of the people of a big country.
The Olympic spirit is not equal to the gold medal complex, nor is it equal to the gold medal power. On the road to becoming a sports power, we still have a lot to do, but the fundamental starting point of these efforts is to "develop sports and enhance the people's physique", which is the fundamental task of China's sports work.
Born in 1963, Zhu Jianhua is a native of Shanghai and has reached a height of 1.93 meters.
Imagine that in the era when the country was still solving the problem of food and clothing, the tall Zhu Jianhua must be the best recognized one in the crowd, when he was a child, he did not like sports very much, at most he played table tennis with his classmates in between classes, but who could have imagined that this little boy who did not love sports would become a generation of high jump geniuses in the future. At the age of 10, Zhu Jianhua began to train in the high jump at Yu Sports School, and Zhu Jianhua, who had a height advantage and talent for high jump, soon became famous in the domestic high jump circle.
Only 20 years old Zhu Jianhua broke the original world high jump record of 2.35 meters at the National Games, and then broke the world record he held twice in a year, the achievement of the three brush world records has not been broken so far, known to the world, but Zhu Jianhua, who was pinned on the high hopes of the people of the whole country, lost in the Los Angeles Olympic Games, he played abnormally in the high jump event, regrettably won a bronze medal.
An interesting detail is that when the Chinese delegation to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics returned to the Olympics, only Ma Yanhong and Zhu Jianhua sat in first class on the flight to the United States, because they were world champions, representative figures of Chinese sports, and shouldered the heavy responsibility of winning Olympic gold medals.
Among them, Ma Yanhong won the women's uneven bars championship at the 20th World Gymnastics Championships in December 1979, when she was only 16 years old.
Later, the big hit Zhu Jianhua failed to withstand the pressure, and Zhu Jianhua, who won the bronze medal, slipped into the economy class, and the first class cabin at this time was full, Xu Haifeng, Li Ning... Ma Yanhong was still in first class, but she felt that something was not tasteful.
Competitive sports are just as cruel.
If you are familiar with why Zhu Jianhua lost gold, you may feel that Ma Yanhong really has excellent psychological quality, because in personal projects, she can "defend" the gold medal in the environment of "only gold medal theory" at that time, which is not something that ordinary perseverance and spiritual strength can do.
Zhu Jianhua could not sleep well for 1 month before the game, Ma Yanhong was actually not much better, she was almost unable to play due to severe chronic appendicitis before the high and low bar finals, and she did not even do much to warm up, and did not participate in the team competition.
In fact, Ma Yanhong's achievements on the high and low bars are by no means as simple as an Olympic champion.
To put it simply, Ma Yanhong's "first" in the history of Chinese gymnastics are: she became China's first gymnastics world champion at the 1979 World Championships, and in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, she became the first Chinese female gymnast Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal.
Ma Yanhong's rapids retreated unexpectedly.
After reaching the peak of his brilliant life in 1984, he chose to officially retire. Like many people in the 1980s, Ma Yanhong chose to go abroad and study at her own expense. In the United States, Ma Yanhong, who has faded the aura of the Olympic Games, is just an ordinary Chinese student, tasting the collision brought about by the cultural differences between China and the West in a foreign land, and constantly adjusting herself. Ma Yanhong used her spare time to work as a coach at the Los Angeles Gymnastics Club to earn tuition for herself, but the Olympic champion's coaching career did not go well at the beginning, and even received several complaints from the parents of the students, and finally had to give up.
No one regards Ma Yanhong as a world champion anymore, and those years were a turning point for Ma Yanhong, and her mentality was completely dropped in various experiences. She understood that despite the Olympic title, everything had to start all over again. In 1994, Ma Yanhong returned to Beijing to be responsible for the promotion of golf events.
Ma Yanhong later experienced a failed marriage, but little is known about her personal story. Ma Yanhong once said idyllicly: "If anyone remembers me, it is enough." Just remembering is enough. "Ma Yanhong's achievements cannot be erased, she is the starting point of China's gymnastics glory, behind the name of Ma Yanhong, the names of Li Ning, Lou Yun, Li Xiaoshuang and others are lined up, and the names on the champion wall of the State General Administration of Sports have been counted.
Why did Zhu Jianhua lose gold? Compared with Ma Hong, the defeat is in the psychological quality!
Before the match, the Chinese people thought he could win the gold medal, and in the whole year from June 1983 to June 1984, Zhu Jianhua broke the world record in the high jump three times unbelievably.
The los Angeles Olympics men's high jump champion was 2 meters 35, which is quite different from the world record of 2 meters 39 held by Zhu Jianhua, even in the Athens Olympic Games 20 years later, the men's high jump champion only jumped 2 meters 36, but Zhu Jianhua only jumped 2 meters 31 that year.
The main reason why Zhu Jianhua did not win the gold medal was the obvious lack of experience and normal mentality to participate in world-class competitions, and the psychological pressure was too great, resulting in abnormal performance.
It is indeed a great tragedy to have a special skill, but to defeat himself because of the "heart demon".
Philosophers say that there are two kinds of tragedies: one is the tragedy of character, and the other is the tragedy of the times.
If this is just a tragedy of Zhu Jianhua's personal character, it is not fair to him.
Zhu Jianhua, who grew up in an extremely closed environment, although he is talented and his training level has reached a world-class height, there are some aspects that cannot be obtained in a closed environment, such as frequent international competition experience.
Liu Xiang's coach, Sun Haiping, is a scholar-type coach who has studied in the United States. Later, he took Liu Xiang out again, playing games one stop at a time, grinding one stop at a time, and walking towards today one stop at a time.
The victory for this pair of masters and apprentices is a victory for "going out" and a victory for China's reform and opening up over the years.
Liu Xiang recalled that when he first went abroad to compete, he was also playing drums in his heart. It is the frequent overseas competitions that allow him to increase his insight, find his own gap, and broaden the horizons of coaches, thinking about how to absorb more advanced training methods, and, more importantly, honing superhuman ability to play.
Earlier this year, Zhu Jianhua advised Liu Xiang on one occasion: We must learn to resist interference. He admitted that the media hype of that year brought him great pressure and led to not winning the gold medal. Today, the degree of media development can be compared with 20 years ago, but Liu Xiangsheng did not repeat the same mistakes.
Coincidentally, Liu Xiang and Zhu Jianhua are both Shanghainese and were both 21 years old when they participated in the Olympic Games, but they were separated by 20 years, 20 years after China went to the world.
After Zhu Jianhua returned to China, he received many insulting letters, and some people came to his door and pointed their noses and scolded.
Overnight, he found that many people around him had changed, the glass of his house had been smashed, and most of the letters that had been full of affectionate praise were full of insults and accusations, and even sent him blades to persuade him to commit suicide.
The windows of his home were broken, and he was asked to spit out the supplements he had eaten.
Zhu Jianhua stayed away from the hustle and bustle and returned to the ordinary.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Zhu Jianhua once again became the only high jumper in China with the expectations of everyone. Zhu Jianhua knew that many people were waiting for him before the shame of the snow, and once again brushed out beautiful numbers to illuminate the entire arena.
In the clamor of "Olympic expectations", he has long regarded winning the Olympic championship as his goal. Just like children who strive to get a perfect score in order to meet the expectations of their parents. It's just that he knows that his physical strength is no longer at its peak, and he has long lost his former calmness and confidence in the face of the high jump under great pressure.
In the end, he only finished 2.19 meters, 20th in the preliminaries, and did not even qualify for the medal. This battle completely destroyed Zhu Jianhua's psychological defense line. Since then, he has gradually withdrawn from the sports world and disappeared from the crowd.
In 1988, Zhu Jianhua officially retired from the army and went to the United States to study in the early 1990s, and then returned to China to engage in sports brokerage. Many people sighed for it. But Zhu Jianhua knew that his genius time had long been exhausted.
After that, he married and had children and lived an ordinary life.
Turning over his resume, he has left many shining moments in his short 25-year sports career, and the numbers that once gave him infinite glory finally stung him deeply.
Fortunately, Zhu Jianhua did not fall into endless regret and could not extricate himself.
In the world's "Olympic expectations", he has lost and suffered, and finally buried the past and no longer let people's expectations influence him.
In the end, in the insults, Zhu Jianhua was discouraged, and in 1988, he chose to retire from the army to study in the United States, and only returned to China in a low profile many years later.
People learned a long time later that zhu Jianhua's Asian record for the men's high jump was broken for 29 years.
Zhu Jianhua, who broke the world record 3 times and lost the blade, gradually disappeared from everyone's vision after retiring.
Zhu Jianhua is the greatest high jumper in China, he has broken the men's high jump world record three times in a row, and is the former high jump world record holder. Zhu Jianhua has a high talent in the high jump, and his best result is 2.39 meters, a result that no one in our country has been able to break for decades.
After Returning to China, Zhu Jianhua engaged in business and engaged in sports brokerage.
In 1991, Zhu Jianhua married his girlfriend and gave birth to a beloved daughter in 1993.