As the 100-day countdown to the Beijing Winter Olympics comes, the 2021/22 short-track speed skating World Cup has kicked off, and the Chinese short-track speed skating team, which has been away from the international arena for more than a year, has also made its season debut at home. Three months later, they will return to the Capital Stadium again for the crucial Winter Olympics. What are the points for the Chinese short track speed skating team that has always shouldered the heavy responsibility of competing for gold and silver at the Beijing Winter Olympics? Which players' performances are worth paying attention to?
As the only Olympic champion in the Current Chinese Short Track Team, Wu Dajing has been under the attention of the outside world almost throughout the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle. In the past three seasons, he has experienced two high-light moments when he broke the 500m world record and faced his opponents, and he has also suffered injuries and ups and downs in the past two seasons. At the same time, opponents represented by The Hungarian player Liu Shaolin are also quietly approaching Wu Dajing. In the first World Cup of the new season, Wu Dajing once regained his former advantage in the main 500 meters, but he ended the gold medal race early due to a foul in the final, which is not a pity. However, at least the performance of the previous few shots in Beijing still allows us to see the recovery of Wu Dajing's state, and the fouls and mistakes experienced in this game are also like a timely reminder for Wu Dajing after the lack of actual combat in the past period. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Wu Dajing was still the most anticipated leader of the Chinese short track team.
In addition to Wu Dajing, Ren Ziwei, who participated in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and An Kai, a middle- and long-distance athlete, have won in the World Cup of the Beijing Winter Olympic Cycle, and are also the main force of the current short track men's team. In terms of the women's team, Fan Kexin, who has competed in two Winter Olympic cycles, is still sticking to the Beijing cycle, and the Mesozoic players Han Yutong and Qu Chunyu are also the main members of the current women's team and the mixed relay lineup. In addition to these familiar names, we also hope to see some fresh faces at the Beijing Winter Olympics, such as Li Wenlong, Sun Long, Yu Songnan, who performed well in the team at the beginning of the year, and Zhang Yuting, the "relay manager" of the women's team. Han Tianyu and Li Jinyu, who temporarily missed the first two games of the World Cup, are also concerned by the outside world, and their ability in the middle and long distance events is indeed needed by the current Chinese short track team.
However, in the competition of the short track speed skating World Cup in Beijing, the two gold medals won by the Chinese short track team all came from the relay event, and only AnKai won a single medal, which also shows the current competition pattern of short track speed skating: the countries that have the ability to compete for medals in each individual event have long been more than China and South Korea, and China still retains some group advantages in relay events. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese short track team is more likely to compete for medals in the event, may also be relaying,
In terms of individual events, except for Wu Dajing's men's 500 meters, it is difficult to say that other events have an absolute advantage over the opponents. In the men's middle and long distance, although South Korea's main player Park Ji-won temporarily missed the first leg of the World Cup, he still had Huang Daxian and Russia's Elistratov leading the way, and the Hungarian liu shaolin and Liu Shaoang brothers also proved their strength at this year's World Championships. Women's sprint, a sport in which the Chinese team originally had a traditional advantage, has now become more of a world of European and American players. The highest podium in the women's middle and long distance event is the battlefield between the Korean women's team led by Choi Min-jin and the Dutch famous Shultin. For the Chinese team, it is not easy to break through the obstacles of these opponents in any single event, but fortunately, short track speed skating has always been a very variable event, with strength and foundation, and naturally there will be the possibility of bringing surprises on the field.
Compared with the lack of certainty of the individual event, the Chinese short track team obviously has more hope of competing for medals and even gold medals in the three relay events, especially the newly added mixed 2000 meters relay event at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese team has performed steadily in the World Cup season of this cycle, and also has a skilled and competitive lineup, and it is also very promising to win the first mixed relay Olympic gold medal in the history of short track speed skating.
"Onion barrel" gold rush challenge, The Chinese team team competition?
In the three seasons of the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle so far, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong have won the Grand Prix, the Finals, the Four Continents Championship and the World Championship, but the only thing missing is an Olympic gold medal. Three years ago at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, who were aiming to rush gold at the time, lost by 0.43 points, watching Germany's "legendary female partner" Savshenko and his third partner Masot realize their dreams. This time, will Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, who are back at home, become the pair that dreams of the Olympics?
At the World Championships in Stockholm in March this year, the last figure skating world championships before the Beijing Winter Olympics, Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, who made mistakes in both the short program and the free skating single jump, failed to reach the top podium for the first time in this cycle, and the winner was the young team from Russia, Michelina/Gallamov. The entanglement between Chinese and Russian pair skating has a long history, although the Russian pair skating has lost momentum slightly in the Pyeongchang cycle, but the Beijing cycle they have made a comeback. In addition to Mishina/Galliamov, the other two world championship medal-winning combinations Tarasova/Molozov and Boykova/Kozlovsky are also quite competitive, which also means that Sui Wenjing/Han Cong's home gold race is not as smooth as we expected, and also puts forward higher requirements for the performance of the two in each game. Fortunately, after the Asian Open, whose debut of the season was also a test event for the Winter Olympics, the Sui/Han combination also expressed its determination to improve the difficulty and polish the program in the middle of the season. Even if the opponent brings more challenges, we know that the "onion barrel" combination will not easily bow its head.
Similar to Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, Peng Cheng/Jin Yang, who are playing steadily in the Beijing cycle, are the only ones who lack medals at the continental level such as the World Championships and the Winter Olympics. In the past three seasons, Peng Cheng/Jin Yang has gradually stabilized in the front line with excellent programming and increasingly stable performances, but if he wants to stand on the podium of the Winter Olympics and surpass the Russian combination, Peng Cheng/Jin Yang also needs to solve the problem of single jump instability, which has plagued the two for a long time.
In addition to the pair skating, men's singles, women's singles and ice dance, Chinese athletes are farther away from the podium. Jin Boyang, who once set the best place in the men's singles of Chinese athletes at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, has also had some ups and downs in his state due to injuries in the Beijing cycle, and has also been widened by the same generation of players Chen Wei, Uno Masamo and even Zhou Zhifang, and his younger opponents such as Keyshan Youzhen have also emerged in international competitions. Compared with the Pyeongchang period, Jin Boyang was already in the situation of "not advancing or retreating".
In the women's singles, although Zhu Yi, who was transferred to represent China, had good results in the youth group, he was subject to injuries after being promoted to the adult group, and there was a gap between the difficulty of the program and the stability of the competition and the first-line women's singles players. However, although there is no hope of impacting the medal, the ice dance combination Wang Shiyue / Liu Xinyu is still expected to surprise us, and the Wang / Liu combination with obvious progress in this cycle will impact the best place in the Olympic history of Chinese ice dance at home.
In addition to the four individual events, the Chinese figure skating team originally planned to impact the winter Olympic team medals in this cycle, but because the Chinese team only has an absolute strength of pair skating, it is not easy to achieve this goal. The Russian team, which is strong in women's singles, doubles and ice dance, is almost determined to win gold medals in the team competition, and the competition for silver and bronze medals is relatively open to competition, but the United States and Japan, which has significantly improved in pair skating, are in the top of the sequence. It is difficult for the Chinese team to use the advantage of pair skating to compete with the United States and Japan, which have only one weak point.
Wen | Gongke
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