Yesterday, the news that several Olympic events won silver medals, in addition to the much-watched Liu Shiwen Xu Xin table tennis mixed doubles silver medal, as well as Zhang Yufei women's 100m butterfly silver medal, Chen Aisen Cao Yuan men's double 10m platform silver medal.
For example, Zhang Yufei was only 0.05 seconds behind, and Chen Aisen CaoYuan was only 1.23 points behind.
This time, there was no more large-scale netizens who insulted and satirized athletes because of their defeat.
The public opinion of regret, anger and reflection coexists, but returns to the normal situation after the competitive sports game -
Victory or defeat is a common affair, and there is no natural success or failure.
Friends who have watched many Olympic Games may remember that we experienced a period of extreme emotion about the victory and defeat of athletes.
The wrong players are chased and scolded, the players with unbalanced mentality are ridiculed as "the worst psychological quality in history", and the athletes themselves feel guilty and cry bitterly...
With the passage of time, everyone is no longer so bitter and vengeful, and no longer blindly ridicules failures and mistakes.
This is a good thing for everyone.
01
"After the loss of the tournament,
Can you blame the athletes? ”
A few days ago, weightlifter Hou Zhihui successfully tried six times and won the gold medal of women's 49 kg.
The coach was interviewed afterwards, and the reporter asked "Do you have any plans to hit the world record", and the coach waved his hand and said no, "Can win easily, why not?" ”
Netizens also agreed, "It should be like this, not injured, the record is not necessary."
This brisk atmosphere is very different from a few years ago.
At the 2012 Olympics, Wu Jingbiao, a weightlifter who lost the competition, apologized on the spot.
At that time, he cried bitterly at the camera, said three "ashamed" in a row, and bowed deeply.
For the guilt and self-blame shown by Wu Jingbiao, the audience felt that he was "a grandfather" and "responsible".
But the day before yesterday, when this video was turned over again and displayed in front of netizens, the reaction of public opinion has undergone subtle changes.
In addition to being responsible and being a grandfather's praise and encouragement, many people began to sigh at the heavy pressure on him and felt painful.
Public opinion's attitude towards sports events has become visible to the naked eye.
After the defeat in last night's table tennis mixed doubles final, the attitude of netizens was very complicated.
In front of the screen, there are regrets, lamenting that Xu Xin Liu Shiwen may be the last Olympic Games, lamenting that this is the table tennis team after many years of not being able to win all the gold medals.
Some people who were so angry that they almost smashed their mobile phones and computers felt incredible, after all, the loss of table tennis was too rare in recent years.
Liu Shiwen shed tears several times in the post-match interview and kept saying sorry to everyone.
The reaction of some netizens is "no need to apologize, you are not sorry for anyone."
Another part of the netizens believe that this time should not be blindly comforted, and now it is time to reflect.
In fact, these two sounds are not necessarily the difference between "you are wrong and I am right", they are just different emotions and different aspects that are common after the event.
On the one hand, winning or losing is extremely important for athletes and for sports.
It is both part of the charm of sports and the necessary professional pursuits of athletes.
Athletes will feel guilty for not performing well enough, and they will not be able to accept their mistakes, which is where their professionalism lies.
On the other hand, when everyone says to Liu Shiwen Xu Xin, "You are not sorry for anyone", it does not mean that people acquiesce in competitive sports that they do not have to win, that competitions do not reflect, and that athletes do not have to improve.
It simply means that athletes don't have to stand on top of the guilt of losing games and put undue moral pressure on them.
After a sports event is lost, the expressions of encouragement, regret, anger, reflection, and comfort are actually within the reasonable range.
At first glance, the Internet is full of various opinions, various emotions, and fierce confrontation.
Compared with one-sided insults or support, this may be the norm in the field of public opinion.
02
Different athletes
Audience opinion is no longer one-sided change, in fact, there are traces since 5 years ago.
The 16 Rio Olympics, perhaps the rise of social media has allowed more people to see the personal side of athletes, or perhaps after experiencing several Olympic Games, people are no longer overly nervous about medals.
Ma Long Zhang Jike began to go out of the circle with emojis, and Fu Yuanhui went out of the circle with the "power of the flood".
Athletes are no longer the "gold-grabbing" machines in the eyes of the public.
It was also from this point that the image of the athlete who was "gritty, serious and impeccable" in the eyes of the audience began to change and disintegrate.
People began to appreciate the other side of the athlete, and the evaluation of the game became more diverse.
In 2016, a video of an interview with a swim team was passed.
The reporter, perhaps out of good intentions, tried to give the under-ranked swimmers some steps down and throw out a bunch of factors that might affect the game.
For example, "Is it because the lane is on the side", "Is it because the game time is ten o'clock", "Is it because the stomach is uncomfortable".
Perhaps subconsciously, I think that I need to find a reason for my poor grades, so that I will not be scolded by everyone.
As a result, not only did the athletes not answer the stubble, Ning Zetao responded sincerely that "the game schedule is no problem, the stomach is no problem."
Zhang Yufei replied, "There is no influence because of the side of the swimway, but swims according to its own rhythm."
Netizens did not feel the need to find a reason, but felt that the interview was inappropriate.
"Athletes must be doing their best to compete, so why ask a result of preserving strength?"
"Whether the result is good or not, what does it mean to force the stomach to fail?"
Rather than wanting a "don't exert your full strength, otherwise it may be better", many people are more willing to face "failure is normal".
At the same time, in addition to the more official and formal serious speeches, the public is also more willing to see the athletes' casual points, natural points,
Still 16 years of swimming interview, the reporter asked Xu Jiayu, an athlete who was gasping for breath at the time——
"When you went into the water before you set off, you looked ahead and were very calm, what were you thinking at that moment?"
Xu Jiayu was asked, and couldn't help but pause for a second, and the corners of his mouth twitched unconsciously twice.
Swimmers, don't stare at the swimsuites in front of you before the game, so where to stare?
Finally, Xu Jiayu held out a sentence, "Thinking about your own technology, others may also be a blank... It is...... In this way..."
The table tennis tournament of 16 years, the commentary is described after the men's singles match:
"We saw that Marlon hadn't had a much exaggerated celebration after winning the men's singles title, and he didn't particularly care about the individual championship because he valued the team championship more and the collective honor more."
But Malone is obviously very happy to give the camera a heart.
At that time, the more serious expression of "value" by reporters and commentators was almost a subconscious habit.
Accustomed to portraying sports events as a state of tension and seriousness, step by step, and accustomed to shaping athletes into the image of carrying thousands of guns and moving forward heavily.
Just like when everyone went to school, they wrote about the National Day holiday experience, and it was "golden autumn in October, autumn is high and refreshing".
At this Olympic Games, the reporter was not too depressed after seeing Zhang Yufei win the silver medal, and he was happy for her.
This is also a corner of the change in the atmosphere of public opinion, the public no longer simply regard athletes as "winning and losing" machines, and no longer use a fixed thinking and value to bind them.
In this context, we can finally leave more room for the "failure" on the sports field to face calmly.
03
Seemingly relaxed "victorious general",
There is never a necessity
Whether it is a call for tolerance or reflection in this public opinion, it is actually based on an objective basis:
The absolute advantage of strong sports has shrunk.
People are willing to comfort and support guilty athletes, but they also don't expect to see strong events in a dilemma, both of which are instinctive impulses.
The silver medals in the mixed doubles table tennis and the men's 10m jump made many people aware of a fact that was once overlooked .
Glory, defeat, defeat are the norm in competitive sports.
And those "habitual" victories are actually not inevitable at all.
For a long time, Chinese sports have chosen a small, refined and ingenious strategy.
Basketball and football, such a popular group event in the world, one is that the competition is large, and the other is that it is very dependent on the professional sports system and the mass base, and Chinese athletes do not have an advantage.
In the early days, in order to practice results and improve performance under limited conditions, several of the advantages of training are types that rely on personal explosions, such as table tennis, diving, gymnastics, and weightlifting.
A few talented athletes can dominate the Olympic arena, such as Liu Guoliang Malin in the table tennis world, Guo Jingjing Wu Minxia in the diving world, and Li Ning Liu Xuan in the gymnastics world.
They have brought extremely impressive results.
At the same time, it is worth everyone's attention that sports is an inevitable trend towards more professionalism, more professionalism and more normalization.
Putting all the pressure on the pursuit of honor on one or a few talented athletes is an unrealistic and long-term way.
In a strength project, most people probably only understand that we are strong and we can win.
However, it is not understood how fiercely the opponent chases in the normal preparation, and the preparation of the athletes from other countries.
After the table tennis mixed doubles competition, many people wondered "when will Japanese table tennis become stronger".
After all, in most people's impressions, the deepest impression of Japanese table tennis is that Fukuhara Ai was beaten and cried by the "Great Devil" Zhang Yining.
In fact, before the first gold competition of this table tennis project, Deng Yaping mentioned in the program that Japanese table tennis has developed rapidly in recent years because of the "generation-breaking action".
Concentrate the use of resources, large competitions and small competitions are all "bet" on young athletes, and reduce the number of old athletes on the field.
In the women's volleyball match against Turkey, the pink-haired No. 99 player Kara Coulter in the Turkish team was impressive, and one person scored the highest score of 18 points in the game.
Before this match, most domestic viewers had no concept of her.
"We are getting stronger, others are getting stronger", this is the normal trend of you chasing after each other in competitive sports.
Everyone thought that the table tennis team easily swept the whole field, but in fact, most of the team members were injured and trained until their clothes were wet.
In the normal competition, it is unrealistic to expect one "big devil" after another.
China is also building a long-term echelon of athletes, but along with this comes the impermanence of victory and defeat that must be experienced when training young players and the old and new are handed over.
The cycle of training athletes may be much longer than the average person thinks.
The cycle of talents is calculated on behalf of others.
The cycle time for athletes to become talents in different sports is different, generally from 5 to 15 years.
For example, in the short track speed skating project, if the athletes want to have a higher level of competition at the age of college students, they must have at least seven or eight years of basic training.
At the latest, it is necessary to undergo professional short-track speed skating training at the age of eleven or twelve.
In the variety show "Big Ice Boy", it was shown that the ice hockey players participating in the show are still ignorant and cute, but they have a strong fighting spirit.
The handover process of the veteran and the new general, and the honing process of the new general in the competition, will inevitably experience ups and downs and failures.
Some time ago in the women's volleyball league, Lang Ping said that he "wanted to train soldiers".
At that time, they had just experienced a defeat, 0:3 defeat to the Japanese team, and many people questioned "why they did not send the main team to play".
Lang Ping responded, "Sending substitutes to fight is mainly to cultivate the ability of young players to solve problems when they encounter difficulties, as well as the ability to resist pressure in adversity."
'It's a very important exercise for them, it's impossible to play every game with a first-line squad in order to win.
In this Olympic Games, Zhu Ting, the main force of the women's volleyball team, was injured in the wrist and her strength was blocked.
Liu Shiwen just underwent surgery in the middle of last year because of her elbow injury, and once she could not take care of herself after the operation, and her arms and legs were covered with bandages when she played.
Xu Xin was also affected by injuries and needed to play in a closed game.
We really can't simply, take for granted, that these gold medalists will easily hold on to everything.
In fact, it can be seen from the interview that more and more young players are more confident and free, no longer overwhelmed by the fear of success or failure.
Zhang Yufei's attitude in an interview after winning the silver medal was quite happy.
After winning the silver medal, my heart was fixed, and I always thought about whether I wanted to win the championship, too nervous, and my heart beat fast.
In this state, she felt that it might be more conducive to preparing for the next game.
The younger generation of athletes who are growing up and facing the game with a calmer and more relaxed posture is a good sign.
The impermanence of victory or defeat in the event may be the pain of sports transformation.
During this period, the only thing we can do is to face the game with more diversified mentalities, and have more awareness of the impermanence and hardships of competitive sports.
There are no naturally winning generals, and there is no "never lose" athletic competition.