When the Dutch runner Van Ferroten in orange gear shouted across the finish line with a kingly posture, someone told her: "Hey, someone arrived before you, the champion is Anna", "Congratulations on winning the silver medal"...
The winner looked lost and dazed: "What, the champion is not me? Anna, who is Anna? ”
"Self-confidence can make people, but when self-confidence is excessive, it is easy to blind yourself and even cause bitter results."
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the process and dramatic ending of the women's cycling road race final explained this sentence very well.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="121" > wins the hot fan Ferroten: "The champion is not me? ”</h1>
In the women's 137 company road bike race, when Dutch van Vleuten crossed the finish line at the Fuji International Circuit, raising her arms high to celebrate her first Olympic road race title, she did not notice:
She actually won a silver medal, and the gold medal was someone else.
Flotten in the sprint section of the rocker
It was only after she and the coach embraced excitedly that she learned that the champion was not her, and the loss instantly crawled all over her face, and she kept asking who the champion was.
She was told: the winner's name was Anna Kissenhof.
She and her team were extremely disappointed and wondered: who could lead us to win the championship? What's going on in between?
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="122" > "A person must also be like a team, recruiting against his own mind and heart"</h1>
The road competition of the Olympic Games is known as the competition between countries. It is said that cycling is a team game, but Anna Kirsenhof broke through the siege of traditional powers, and her victory was won through the breakout.
Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, the cycling powers, often have five riders to compete. Anna Kirsenhof of Austria, on the other hand, fought alone.
The length of the women's track in the Olympic Road Race is 137 kilometers, and the climb height is 2692 meters.
Most of the drivers are in a hurry to save their strength
Most of the riders do not rush to attack in order to save physical strength, on the other hand, because they hope to cooperate with each other "through the assistance of their teammates" to contain players from other countries.
Anna Kirsenhof alone, without any concern in this regard, chose to enter the breakout group from the beginning of the race, she single-handedly, soared on the track, and at one point led the main group by more than 10 minutes.
The problem is that no one has noticed her lead — probably everyone is wondering: after all, what kind of climate can she achieve if she is alone, has no teammates, and is weak?
Anna rushed forward at the beginning
Then, with 40 kilometres left before the race, Anna once again used the advantage of climbing to shake off Israeli driver Shapila and Polish driver Pulitha.
It seems that this is nothing, after all, the whole race is a 137-kilometer race, and it is still long, and still no one notices her.
Anyone who went to the race knew that there was no commentary, no background music, no thrills and tensions at breakneck speed, just the roaring motors of cars and drones carrying cameras in different positions, and a group of people riding bicycles on the road.
Maybe no one thinks that this game will be anything special, it will not be a game with some ups and downs, and it may even feel lengthy and boring.
However, the dramatic scene occurred at the moment when the winning favourite Netherlands Van Ferrotten crossed the finish line.
Floten, who shook the car in the sprint section, seemed to be the champion determined to win
Dutch player Floton frantically cheered and celebrated his "victory"
She shook the car and crossed the finish line with her arms...
When she and the coach were hugging excitedly, she was told: You are second.
The loss instantly crawled all over her face, seeing her at the scene and asking all the time, who is Anna?
This is the dramatic ending mentioned at the beginning.
I think Floton must have been very annoyed. It's not because I won the silver medal itself, but I obviously have the strength to do better, but I don't even know how I lost the gold medal.
The winner belongs to the little-known Austrian player Anna Kirsenhof.
With no coach, no teammates, no team doctor, alone, she crossed the finish line with a huge advantage of 1 minute and 15 seconds ahead of the second place (former world champion Flotten), and also won Austria's first Olympic gold medal in cycling since the first Olympic Games in 1896, creating a great record.
Anna wins the championship instantly
CNN incredulously said: "This is one of the biggest shocks in the history of the Olympic Games."
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="123" > her success is not simply "breaking the rules"</h1>
Spectators who don't watch road bike races may not understand that the Netherlands has a monopoly advantage over this project, and this year's women's World Tour has won eight of them, almost like the Chinese table tennis team.
Many people in the industry have long agreed that the era of individual heroes in road cycling competitions has passed, and more competition is teamwork and tactical strategy, without teammates to cooperate with each other to help, it is almost impossible for one person to get a good ranking alone.
So this time, the Dutch team sent a four-person team of Wang Bomb, the past history of the four people is very dazzling, two Olympic champions, two world championship champions, with two "highway sisters" plus another outstanding young player escort, the gold medal is bound to win.
There are also The British team and the German team, all of which have sent high-achieving drivers, almost all of whom are popular champions in the eyes of the media.
At the beginning of the game, it can be seen that their team tactics have long been honed in major competitions, and the team members take turns to ride in front of the main rider as "wind breakers" to protect themselves, rushing out and back in the big troops, giving each other space for each other.
Because who rides in front, the greater the wind resistance, the greater the wind resistance, the more physical exertion, everyone feels that it is not a good game strategy to lead the rabbit all the time, only the team can take turns to lead the ride to minimize the wind resistance and save the physical strength of each team member.
Anna's Olympic participation certificate
Anna's educational experience
Anna rushed out at the beginning
The 137-kilometer track starts on the outskirts of Tokyo, enters the countryside, and ends at the Fuji Circuit at the foot of Mt. Fuji, with two difficult climbs of Mt. Fuji and Mt. Mikuni in between, totaling 2692 meters.
Anna in the game
Route map of the women's road race for the Tokyo Olympic Games
She also planned to launch an offensive at the beginning, trying to keep herself in the front position, and in fact, it was true that shortly after the start of the game, Anna was more than 10 minutes away from the big team players, so that almost everyone forgot about her presence.
Anna from beginning to end is her own training with nutrition group equipment, collecting race data to develop strategies, plus she leads herself throughout the whole process, and only makes friends with people she trusts in her life, and the sentence of living as a team alone is vividly displayed in her.
Anna rode hard
And what are the real teams doing?
They had indeed been conscientiously carrying out their strategy, and several members of the Dutch team were still pressing the speed of the large force for the rushing Floten in the last ten kilometers or so, blocking the other opponents from emerging, and the riders had to be consumed internally in the large force.
However, this further opened up the distance between everyone and Anna, making them even less likely to see the most important opponent.
In the sprint section, Floton can even get up and ride the rocker, and it can be seen that she still has physical strength, but with these so-called race strategies, the gold medal is like a bag, and she can't seem to find a reason to try her best to get better results.
Anna's final sprint stage
The Dutch team that failed to successfully defend the title was frustrated: we completely underestimated her, and she didn't even appear on the list we were going to study.
After the race, Anna said, "I just want to get to the finish line. My legs were completely empty. I've never emptied myself so much in my life. ”
Anna collapsed to the ground after the sprint
The winner and runner-up were on the podium
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="04" data-track="93" > "upset" Anna Kissenhoff, who won the championship, is not a myth, but it is still great</h1>
The reason why Anna's victory has attracted so much attention may also be related to her "academic bully" background, so we will see the emergence of various "mythological versions" of many self-media accounts recently, some say that her "main business is a scientist, a mathematician, to play in the competition", "she is an amateur player" and so on, which has derived a lot of poisonous chicken soup articles to mythologize her.
Indeed, she holds a Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and a Doctorate in Applied Mathematics from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain. She is also a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, Switzerland, and a member of the Research Group on Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations in Mathematical Physics.
Anna Kirsenhof, actually an Austrian female road cyclist, is also a professional.
Anna Kirssenhof has been in the sport of cycling since 2014. She had previously competed in triathlons and bi-events, and after an injury, she began turning to cycling in 2017. On July 25, 2021, she won the women's road cycling competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
At the Olympic Games, due to various reasons such as the expiration of her contract, she was unable to join the professional team, so she returned to the field as an individual rider this time, and there was no team or coach. This also gave her the opportunity to avoid the analysis of her opponents, sink her heart and prepare for the battle, and quietly become a dark horse to win the championship.
Stripped of all this "aura of individual heroism", we can still say that she is a great athlete. She inspires people, in addition to telling us how powerful professionalism is and how powerful the "power of focus" is.
She also told us that if you have to fight alone, "turn yourself into a team" and move forward without distraction, you can also create miracles.
Back to ourselves, in this fast-paced era, are we also in the long-term competition, lost ourselves, and even in the matter of raising children, we unconsciously let the children join the internal friction of the competition that always stares only at others.
What kind of person am I? What kind of person do I want to be? What am I going to do? What do I like? What my goal is... These propositions that need to be constantly explored inward are indispensable questions for every child's growth, but in the fierce competition, in the pursuit of high scores and the single standard of famous schools, all of this is erased and skipped in comparison.
In the tortoise and rabbit race, the turtle finally defeated the rabbit, people think that it is because the turtle did not wake the rabbit, but in fact, it may also be that the turtle is not interested in competition and victory, it is just enjoying the matter of moving forward.
Many people often use "only compared with themselves" as self-consolation when competing behind, but Anna tells us from her own personal experience that "only comparing with ourselves" is the ultimate proposition of life that completely shakes off the pattern of internal rolls, and gold medals, fame, prestige or money are just add-ons in the journey.
Anna said, "Don't give up, stick to doing what suits your character, you just have to follow your instincts." ”
I think we can also try to learn to say the same thing to our children.
*Edited: 曈曈
*Content Synthesis & Reference Sources:
1. Public number: Sanni, Xiaoli, a mother who loves to read children's books
2. Windswept - Bigfoot: Is the upset Anna Kirssenhof really an unprofessional amateur? 》
3. Sina.com: "The Great Victory, Kalapas, Anna Kirssenhof Breakout to Make History"