Text | Wang Zhenyi
Edit | Sun Dasheng
On June 13, 2019, the 37-year-old badminton star Li Zongwei announced his retirement, ending his 19-year badminton career. At the press conference on retirement, he choked up several times and cried: "Winning olympic gold medals for my country has always been my dream, but unfortunately, I can't achieve this goal." ”
To avoid a recurrence of cancer, Li Zongwei had to retire, and the opponent who prevented him from winning gold at the Olympics was Chinese badminton star Lin Dan.
Shortly after Li Zongwei announced his retirement, Lin Dan shared a song called "Friends Don't Cry" on social platforms, with the caption: Play alone, no one accompanies me.
After years of "fighting" on the field, Lin Dan and Li Zongwei have become friends who cherish each other.
Now that two years have passed, how is Li Zongwei living? What is the story of him and Lin Dan? How did he become a famous featherweight?
01
Li Zongwei was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1982, and his ancestral home is Nan'an County, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province.
Li Zongwei's family was very poor, and his father, Li Yacai, made a living by working as a short-term worker, working as a painter, a fish transporter, and a long-distance taxi driver. Her mother was a housewife who struggled to make ends meet as a tailor.
Coupled with Li Zongwei's two older brothers and one sister above, the life of Li Zongwei's family is very difficult.
When Li Zongwei was born, many relatives of the Li family suggested that Li Zongwei's parents send Li Zongwei to reduce the family's financial burden. If it were not for Li Zongwei's mother's strong opposition, Li Zongwei would now call other people his father and mother.
Although Li Zongwei did not send anyone in the end, he lived a hard life with his family, and his brother and sister dropped out of school very early to go out to work in order to help the family.
Compared with his older brothers and sisters, Li Zongwei was much luckier, and he embarked on the road of professional badminton player.
In 1993, Li Yacai took Li Zongwei to a badminton hall, where he met a professional badminton coach. The coach found that Li Zongwei's physical coordination was far better than that of children of the same age, and felt that he was a good seedling to play badminton, and immediately accepted him as an apprentice.
Since then, every day after school, Li Zongwei has gone to the badminton hall to practice badminton.
At that time, there was no money to buy a good racket, so Li Zongwei went to work in a sports shop near the badminton hall and made money by threading the racket, so as to buy his favorite racket.
This year Li Zongwei was 11 years old.
After a year of hard training, Li Zongwei participated in the selection of the Malaysian national team, unfortunately he was not selected, he was very sad, but he did not give up, he chose to continue to work hard.
After 5 years of hard training, Lee Joined the Malaysian national team in 1999, when he was 17 years old.
In the first two months of entering the national team, Li Zongwei cried almost every night, and the training of the national team was too hard, and he was only allowed to go home once a year.
Seeing that Li Zongwei was training too hard and too tired, his mother and sister softened their hearts, and they told him to come back. But Li Yacai stopped them, saying, "His future is there." ”
Fortunately, with the passage of time, Li Zongwei adapted to the rhythm of the national team, and even he trained much more than others, others started training at 6 o'clock in the morning, and he started training at 5:30.
Years later, in an interview with the media, he admitted that from a poor child to a member of the national team, it was not easy to get to this step, so no matter what, "we must stick to it."
Li Zongwei's efforts were not in vain, and in the year he joined the national team, he won the Malaysian National Championship and began to emerge in the badminton world.
At that time, Li Zongwei could not have imagined that a year later he would encounter a lifelong "fierce enemy".
02
In 2000, at the Asian Youth Championships in Tokyo, Li Zongwei and Lin Dan met.
In this tournament, Lin Dan won the first place and Li Zongwei won the third place, and they had no chance to play against each other.
At that time, Lin Dan did not care about Li Zongwei, and he regarded Indonesia's badminton star Tawfik as his opponent.
But even so, Li Zongwei was deeply impressed by Lin Dan, and he felt that Lin Dan's speed and explosive power were amazing, and he would definitely achieve brilliant results in the future.
When they actually played against each other on the field, it was 2004, the year they met in the Thomas Cup qualifiers, and Li Zongwei lost to Lin Dan 1:2.
The unforgettable thing that made Li Zongwei unforgettable this year was not only losing to Lin Dan.
This year, at the Malaysian Open Badminton Championships, he won his first Open championship and entered the top 16 in the world rankings.
This year, he participated in the Olympic Games for the first time, when the men's singles of badminton came to 16 into 8 competitions, the entire Malaysian badminton national team had lost, and the leader shouted to Li Zongwei: "Zongwei, you have to cheer up, Malaysia is the only one left." ”
Unfortunately, in this match, Li Zongwei lost to China's Chen Hong.
The defeat in the Olympic Games made Li Zongwei work harder in training. In 2005, Li Zongwei, who won the third place in the men's singles of the World Badminton Championships and the men's singles champion of the Malaysian Open Badminton Championships, replaced Huang Zonghan as the single brother of The Malaysian Men's Singles.
In 2006, Lee Chung Wai was ranked No. 1 in the world, becoming Malaysia's third men's singles player to reach the top of the world since 1980.
In 2007, Li Zongwei won the Indonesia Open Badminton Championships.
In early 2008, Li Zongwei won the men's singles championship in the BWF Super Series Finals.
For Li Zongwei's excellent performance, Malaysia has hopes for his victory at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
However, at the Beijing Olympics, Li Zongwei lost to Lin Dan and only won the silver medal.
Even if it is a silver medal, this medal is very heavy for the Malaysian team, which is the second Olympic silver medal in the history of the Malaysian team, and Lee Zongwei is also regarded as a representative of Malaysia's sports revival.
For winning the Olympic Games, Malaysians did not give up, Li Zongwei did not give up, Li Zongwei shouldered the hope of the whole Malaysia.
This hope put Li Zongwei under tremendous pressure.
In 2012, at the Thomas Cup badminton match, Li Zongwei sprained his ankle against Gade and had to retire, and the doctor even warned him.
In the past, Li Zongwei's mood swings would not be very large, but this time he cried because the London Olympics were going to be held in 2 months, and Li Zongwei did not want to wait for another 4 years because of a foot injury.
In order to be able to compete, he took painkillers and wrapped the injury tightly, so he made it all the way to the final, but finally lost to Lin Dan and took a silver medal again.
In order to be able to beat Lin Dan, some people suggested that he selectively compete like Lin Dan to maintain his form, but this advice Li Zongwei could not adopt, because there are many good badminton players like Lin Dan in China, but Malaysia only has Li Zongwei.
Even if he is tired and tired, he must appear in all the arenas because Malaysia needs him and the hopes he carries are too heavy.
In 2016, Li Zongwei once again stormed the Olympic Games, in the badminton men's singles semifinals he played against his old rival Lin Dan, this time their game was very exciting, and finally Li Zongwei won the game 2:1, he finally defeated Lin Dan in the Olympic Games.
Just when Malaysians thought that beating Lin Dan would be the gold medal, Li Zongwei lost to China's Chen Long in the final and won the Olympic silver medal for the third time.
Even so, Li Zongwei still did not give up, and he decided to hit the gold medal again at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
However, it is not easy for Li Zongwei to stand on the Olympic field again.
03
In August 2018, Li Zongwei and Lin Dan played the last showdown of their careers, and in the semi-final of the All England Open, they were very good at tricks, which was wonderful, but in the end Li Zongwei lost.
This is the 40th duel between Li Zongwei and Lin Dan, and in these 40 matches, Li Zongwei only won Lin Dan 12 times, so that Li Zongwei won the title of "Millennium Old Second".
But the defeat to Lin Dan is not terrible, there is such an excellent opponent, they are more pursuit of excellence, and they have become friends who cherish each other.
For Li Zongwei, what is ten thousand times more terrifying than Lin Dan is the disease.
In July 2018, during a match against Japanese badminton star Kento Momota, Lee Zongwei developed symptoms of neck swelling. Subsequently, the Malaysian Badminton Association announced that Li Zongwei had withdrawn from many events in the second half of the year due to respiratory problems.
Not long after, the Malaysian Badminton Association announced the news that Li Zongwei had been diagnosed with early nasopharyngeal cancer.
This news, which was nothing less than a thunderbolt, shocked the whole of Malaysia.
Many people think that Li Zongwei will announce his retirement after suffering from cancer, but Li Zongwei firmly said to the outside world: "Wait for me, I will come back." ”
Li Zongwei began a hard road to fight cancer.
In the third week of treatment, complications of nasopharyngeal cancer occurred, and Li Zongwei's throat was all rotten, and he could not swallow after eating, which was very painful.
In order to allow Li Zongwei to eat, the doctor could only spray anesthetics on his throat when he ate, so that Li Zongwei could not feel the pain caused by eating.
And because of cancer, Li Zongwei was rapidly emaciated.
Looking at Li Zongwei's tormented by illness, his wife Huang Miaozhu washed her face with tears every day and was very sad.
Li Zongwei did not want his wife and family to worry about him, and he often forced a smile in front of them, in fact, because of the torture of cancer, he would secretly cry in the bathroom alone.
Fortunately, after 33 times of mass ion therapy, half a year later, Li Zongwei recovered.
Although Li Zongwei spent 9.36 million yuan on this fight against cancer, his net worth in 2016, which has become the male single brother of Malaysian badminton, has reached 500 million yuan.
It can be said that badminton changed his fate, if he is still a poor man in Penang, facing cancer, he has only one way to die.
For Malaysia, for the Olympic gold medal, after recovering, Li Zongwei resumed training.
04
Originally planned by Li Zongwei, he made a comeback at the All England Open Badminton Tournament in March 2019. However, due to physical reasons, the comeback of the Malaysian Open Badminton Tournament was postponed to April.
But even at the Malaysian Open Badminton Championships, Li Zongwei still did not appear.
His family and doctors stopped him because of intense training and stress that could cause his condition to recur.
In the end, Li Zongwei had to accept the reality and held a press conference on June 13, 2019 to announce his retirement.
On that day, with tears in his eyes, he said: "Winning an Olympic gold medal for my country has always been my dream, but unfortunately, I can't achieve this goal." ”
After a pause, he continued: "But I'm pretty sure that one of the Malaysian teams will always get the gold medal. ”
Although Li Zongwei did not win an Olympic gold medal in his career, he still has a very high status in the badminton world. In his 19-year career, he reached the men's singles finals 103 times in all competitions, won 69 championships and 34 runners-up, and occupied the world number one position in men's singles for 349 weeks, setting a record for the longest in badminton.
And even after retiring, the story of Li Zongwei and badminton is not over, he actively promotes badminton in Malaysia and cultivates badminton talents. He also served as head of Malaysia's Tokyo Olympic delegation.
However, due to health reasons and the advice provided by the doctor that it was not advisable to go abroad, Lee ZongWei did not follow the delegation to Tokyo, but his position as head of the delegation was still retained, and the Malaysian leadership believed that Li Zongwei demonstrated the spirit of Olympic and let him serve as the head of the delegation to boost the morale of Malaysian athletes.
Today, in addition to doing some badminton-related work and managing the company he founded, Li Zongwei has left more time for his family, traveling with his wife, celebrating the birthdays of his two sons, and making up for the lack of family time.
Li Zongwei also reconciled with himself for not winning the Olympic Championship, saying: "I shoulder the honor of the whole country, so every time I take a step closer to the championship, I feel that it is a gift." ”
For the current life, Li Zongwei is very satisfied and cherished, after all, not everyone can change the fate of themselves and their families through badminton like Li Zongwei, and become the pride of the country.
Bless his future life is still good.