Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News Reporter Tang Xufeng
In a few days, Tokyo, Japan, under the epidemic situation, will usher in the first empty Olympic Games in the history of the Olympic Games in a hundred years.
After experiencing the epidemic, everyone has a different feeling about health and life than before.
In a sense, each of us is a participant, everyone has their own Olympic Games. Sometimes in the gym, sometimes on the runway of life.
The Qianjiang Evening News "Hour Olympics" is coming.
We believe in the power of willingness to believe, and believe that everyone can be the protagonist of their own arena.
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At 5:25 p.m. on July 18, after more than three hours of flying, Li Wenlian, who had departed from Shanghai, arrived at Tokyo's Narita International Airport by plane. Next, she will be stationed in the Olympic Village with the badminton players participating in the Olympic Games.
This trip to Tokyo will be an unusual experience for 47-year-old Li Wenlian.
As the only Chinese badminton threader at the Tokyo Olympic Games, Li Wenlian did his homework for this expedition. After finalizing her itinerary at the end of May, she hired an English teacher at her own expense and spent two hours every night "badly" English.
Li Wenlian usually lives in Cixi City, Zhejiang Province, where she runs a badminton shop. In the past 10 days, Li Wenlian has arrived in Shanghai, and the itinerary is very tight. After participating in the Olympic badminton sponsor YONEX (Yonex) for five consecutive days, she also went to the hospital designated by the Japanese Consulate for nucleic acid testing twice, and took time to buy protective clothing, masks, gloves, goggles, disinfectant water and other epidemic prevention supplies. For the rest of the day, she was briefly reunited with her husband.
Li Wenlian's husband, Li Bing, is a badminton coach at the Xuhui District Youth Sports School in Shanghai. Usually, the couple is one in Shanghai and the other in Cixi. At 9 a.m. on the 18th, they packed up their luggage and set off, and her husband drove her to Pudong International Airport.
Li Wenlian sent reporters photos of the expedition, and in the gap between waiting at the airport, she sent a circle of friends.
How did Li Wenlian, the lady of the sporting goods store, become a badminton threader? It all started with her marriage.
It turned out that Li Wenlian and her husband Li Bing were both sports athletes. Li Wenlian is a native of Shanxi and a former race walker. Li Bing, on the other hand, is a native of Jiangsu and has played for the Jiangsu badminton team. The two fell in love and married after retiring, and the story reporter was inconvenient to ask more. Only to learn that because Li Bing's family set up a factory in Cixi, Zhejiang, the two came from Jiangsu to seek career development.
By chance, Principal Cen of Cixi Minghe Primary School heard that Li Bing was once a professional badminton player and invited him to come to the school as a badminton coach.
Li Wenlian was a mother at that time, but she was not satisfied with being a full-time wife. As her husband "returns to her old business," she also wants to find something to do in a strange city.
"It was 2002, in order not to delay the usual pick-up and drop off of my son, I thought I would open my own shop freely, so I opened a badminton supply store near Yubo Square." Li Wenlian recalled.
Usually in the shop is still relatively idle, under the advice of her husband, Li Wenlian began to learn to thread badminton rackets. They bought threading machines and tools such as wire cutters, starter clips, cable tweezers, tweezers, etc. Li Bing did not have much time to teach his wife every day, but only encouraged her to practice more and think about it repeatedly.
In this way, after more than ten years of training, Li Wenlian's threading technology has progressed rapidly. Many people around who love to play badminton, once the racket net line is broken, they will come to the store to find her to wear a line, which is also a kind of after-sales service.
People who like to play badminton understand the importance of rackets and ball lines, "three-point racket seven-point lines". If the badminton racket is the weapon that badminton players rely on to fight, then the stringer is the one who polishes the weapon and gives the soul of the racket.
Hourly news reporters watched a video of Li Wenlian threading customers' rackets. Only to see her standing next to the computer stringer, her hands flexibly operating, pumping, pulling, turning... The action is done in one go. It only takes about a quarter of an hour or so, winding the knot, and a badminton racket is threaded.
How to make the line fit the racket, let the athletes find the best feel, and play the performance of the racket is the place where the skill of the stringer is tested. "The key is that the tension (or tightness) of each thread is uniform, which is very difficult." Li Wenlian recalled his many years of threading experience, "At first it felt very difficult, then it felt easy, and in the end it felt difficult." She made an analogy, just like learning to drive, at first it was a little difficult to get started, learning to feel simple, but to really drive the car well, without any accidents, is actually a difficult thing.
Li Wenlian's sporting goods store has represented different sports brands, including Li Ning and Wickedo. In 2014, she became a stringer of the Li Ning brand and began to appear in domestic and large competitions, providing threading services for professional athletes. The following year, she passed the international badminton stringer examination and became an international stringer for Li Ning supplies. In 2017, Li Wenlian signed a contract with Yonex and obtained Yonex's International Stringing Division Certificate.
"This is the top-level stringer qualification certificate, the pass rate is only 2% when the assessment is made, and there are currently less than 20 people in China who have this qualification." Li Wenlian told the hourly news reporter.
After many international badminton competitions, Li Wenlian is also famous in the badminton circle. Internationally renowned badminton players such as Lin Dan, Li Zongwei, Zhou Tiancheng, Kento Momota, Victor Assalsen, Carolina Marlene Martin, Ratchano Indanon and other internationally renowned badminton players have received her threading services and praised her skills.
"Whether the thread is worn well or not, these badminton players can feel it when they are training." Li Wenlian said that when a threading master completes a work, he also relies on experience and feeling, and no instrument can detect and quantify it. Experienced threaders can judge the elasticity of the racket based on the feel and sound.
In recent years, Li Wenlian's badminton supply store has turned to a monopoly on Yonex brand products. She is not only the highest-level S1 threader in the Yonex threading team, but also regularly participates in the training of Yonex China's stringers. In March, Mr. Lee called the company asking if he intended to go to Tokyo to work as a stringer for the Olympic badminton event.
Li Wenlian decided to bravely challenge once. Although she has participated in many domestic events over the years, it is the first time for her to go abroad to serve athletes, especially in competitions like the Olympic Games.
Talking about his feelings before the expedition to Tokyo, Li Wenlian said that he was very proud, "I will seize the opportunity and do a good job carefully." In addition, she said that the epidemic is also her focus, so she must do a good job of protection and do not let her family worry.
It is understood that the badminton competition schedule of this Tokyo Olympic Games is from July 24 to August 2. The badminton stringer team has only 10-12 people, from Malaysia, Britain, the United States, Indonesia and other countries, Li Wenlian is the only Chinese threader, during the game, she and her colleagues may face heavy tasks.
"It usually takes me 15 to 20 minutes to thread a badminton racket, and if the racket is deformed and the threading tube is broken, it may take more time." Li Wenlian said she once wore 27 badminton rackets a day at a national youth badminton championship held in Fenghua, Ningbo.
"Sometimes five or six rackets are sent at the same time, which is a lot of pressure for the threader." Li Wenlian said.
Before this expedition, her husband cheered her up. His son, who was far away in Inner Mongolia, also called to send concern. This is a sports home, the son is 22 years old, as a curler into the Chinese youth team, and now exchanged to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region curling team.
"Participating in the Olympic event service not only represents me personally, but also represents the vast number of badminton threaders in China to some extent, and also represents China." I'll definitely do well. Before leaving, Li Wenlian told reporters on the phone.
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