Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai, September 27 Title: At first, they did not want Yao Ming to play basketball - an interview with former basketball players Yao Zhiyuan and Fang Fengdi
Xinhua News Agency reporter Ding Wenxian Wang Jingyu
In the past seventy years, Fang Fengdi, who is the same age as the Republic, has experienced many "unexpecteds".
In 1964, when she first touched basketball at the age of 15, she could not have expected such a close and long-term relationship with sports. Just as ten years later, she is already the captain of the women's national basketball team, she has heard about American basketball, but how can she know that in the future, her son will set foot on the other side of the ocean as a draft leader.
As a witness, witnessing the growth of generations of athletes, witnessing the new Chinese sports climbing one peak after another, Fang Fengdi sighed at the rapid changes in life, and her husband, Yao Zhiyuan, who is also a basketball player, said bluntly: "Now everything is better than before, not a little better." ”
Source: On June 27, 2002, Yao Ming's father Yao Zhiyuan (right) and mother Fang Fengdi (center) congratulated Yao Ming on joining the NBA in Beijing. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen Xiaowei
Cool off under the poles
Before the third year of junior high school, Fang Fengdi's life and sports had almost no intersection.
Until one day, she was followed to the school by the coach of the Shanghai Jing'an District Junior Sports School, and she began to contact basketball without understanding. After graduation, Fang Fengdi entered the Shanghai youth team, transferred to the national team in 1970, and yao Zhiyuan, 19, joined the Shanghai men's basketball team in the same year.
Shanghai's wind and rain playground is their common memory.
The "wind and rain playground" does not cover the wind or rain, and is an outdoor dirt field. After the fall, the sand seeps into the wound, and the repeated scabs are repeated and repeatedly fallen, and it will not get better. In the summer, Fang Fengdi returned home after practicing the ball, and she was originally white and clean after being exposed to the sun all day, and her parents shook their heads in pain. In the case of bad weather, everyone went to the office building to run stairs, sit-ups, jump rope, "anyway, the coach always has a way."
Yao Zhiyuan still remembers that there was no place to shade during the training break, and everyone lined up to hide in the shadow of the telephone pole. "At three o'clock in the afternoon, only seven or eight people can enter, and at four or five o'clock the whole team can enter."
Source: On December 31, 2010, Yao Ming's father Yao Zhiyuan, his mother Fang Fengdi, and his wife Ye Li watched Yao Ming's game at the home of the NBA Rockets. Xinhua News Agency
Later, the wind and rain playground finally built a stadium, and the players waxed and maintained themselves, carefully dragging the ground before each training. However, there are more monks and less porridge, and the teams have to practice indoor and outdoor in turn.
At that time, the conditions were very simple in every way. The Shanghai team is issued two sets of clothes and two pairs of pull-back shoes every year. "If you run into Huang Meitian, can you do two pieces of clothing?" Fang Fengdi shook her head and said. And the basketball is more rapid and stops, the sponge of the heel and the forefoot is quickly crushed, the grinding foot is painful, and the upper is often soaked with sweat and broken. Tinkering is the norm, and the old cobblers and small tailors of the sports team are familiar with the athletes of various sports teams.
See the world from the fiasco
Despite this, compared with their predecessors, Fang Fengdi and Yao Zhiyuan still caught up with the good times. In the 1970s, China's sports circles were gradually breaking the closure, and there were more and more opportunities for foreign exchange competitions.
Most of them are friendly matches, and the Chinese team has used this difficult and slow exploration of the world basketball level.
Fang Fengdi's deepest impression is in 1976, when she was already the captain of the national team, in preparation for the first Asian Championship after the restoration of the Asian Basketball League seat, the women's basketball team visited Japan in June, against the previous year's World Championship runner-up original team - six real knives and real guns, six defeats, an average of 27 points per game.
"The progress in basketball techniques and tactics in the world is really an eye-opener." Sandwiching defense, tight area, many chinese teams can not enter the front court. The style of play that I had never seen before, the players were blindfolded.
Back in Beijing, Fang Fengdi was embarrassed to enter the canteen of the Sports Committee and "couldn't lift her head." Everyone held their breath in their hearts and began to "practice to the death".
Four months later, at the Asian Championships in Hong Kong, the girls fought a "turnaround battle" and defeated the Japanese team. But Fang Fengdi was still full of regret in her happiness, because many of the other side's meritorious veterans retired before the game, and the color of victory seemed to be a little weaker.
As for the inspection of other teams, they can only rely on "temporary holding on to the Buddha's feet". For example, against the strong opponent South Korea, you can only go to the sidelines to observe the opponent's game. After this kind of "everyone doesn't know each other" game, Chinese girls hung the gold medal on their chests and reached the top of Asia for the first time.
Pain and glory coexist
In the days of the team, Yao Zhiyuan and Fang Fengdi were actually quite "painful".
In that era when the selection of materials mostly relied on coaches to look at it, Fang Fengdi was "purely because of her tall height" and was looked at. "I train hard and hard, but my physical fitness is poor, I can't run, I can't jump, my endurance is not good, and I'm really tired of playing."
What's more, the lack of scientific and perfect training and rehabilitation system has aggravated this hardship.
At that time, the main lineup did not rotate much, and there were always five people from the beginning to the end. Among Fang Fengdi's teammates, there are very few who insist on reaching the age of thirty. She herself fell wounded. In 1976, when she went to Japan to play a warm-up match, Fang Fengdi and her teammates made a mistake in coordination, and her companion sat on her knee joint, "clicked", and did not sleep all night.
There were almost no rehabilitation measures, and plasters, acupuncture and massage were the most common treatments at that time. Fang Fengdi "managed to get it by herself" and insisted on finishing the Asian Championship. It wasn't until she went to the hospital in 2009 for an arthroscopy that she learned that the old injury from 33 years ago was a meniscus tear.
Yao Zhiyuan's situation was not much better. "After about four years of practice, one knee was broken, and in two years, the other was broken."
"Ordinary injuries, it's hard to shoot a film, let alone open the knife." He recalled, "Being injured and broken is almost like retiring." ”
They held out until 1979, with injuries, and they said goodbye to the field one after another. Four years later, the women's basketball girls stood on the podium of the World Championships and won the bronze medal at the Los Angeles Olympics the following year. Fang Fengdi is a treasure of these glories, watching basketball games, there is always a special emotion surging in her heart.
"Basketball is my family's legacy"
After retiring, Yao Zhiyuan will still play, without the pressure of achievements, and feel "quite happy". Even happier was the fall of 1980, when Yao Ming was born.
At that time, Yao Zhiyuan was playing the Nine Cities Basketball Tournament for the Shanghai Workers' Team. The day happened to be the final, the team's car was waiting outside the hospital, the game began at 7:30, and at 7 o'clock his son was born, Yao Zhiyuan hurriedly jumped on the car to rush to the stadium and won the championship in one fell swoop.
Source: On December 31, 2010, Yao Ming's mother, Fang Fengdi, held her granddaughter in the stands. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Song Qiong)
Having his first basketball at the age of 4, entering the Shanghai youth team at the age of 14, and carrying his father's number at the age of 16, Yao Ming once said: "Basketball is the inheritance of my family. ”
Although this inheritance is not the original intention of Yao Zhiyuan and his wife.
Knowing that athletes are hard at work, they are actually reluctant to let Yao Ming go down this road again. Instead of playing, I hope that my son will "be a good person". "It doesn't matter if you can't beat it, it's only a period of life, but being a person is a lifetime."
Yao Ming was in the NBA, was chased by reporters to ask about feelings, Fang Fengdi always said "I don't think much, playing should be hard, we all came this way." But later, watching my son take over the club, do charity, a lot of things, and go to Shanghai Jiaotong University to study, "really quite pleased."
Basketball is the eternal topic of "Yao House". In the past, the couple talked a little more, discussed techniques and tactics, and told their son about the experiences and lessons they had experienced. Now I listen more and talk less, "I feel a little out of tune."
Yao Ming is constantly learning, and the times are making great strides forward. "Now from sports equipment, sports venues, to medical support, logistics support, coaching team, are very complete." Fang Fengdi had a deep understanding.
"In the past, there were at most two coaches and a team leader in the team, but now watching the game, there are more than a dozen people sitting below, how can there be more than playing?" Yao Zhiyuan said with a smile.
Everything is changing, but some emotions are as old as ever.
Every time basketball is played on TV, the old couple will definitely watch it. Talking about a wonderful game, Fang Fengdi will still be excited to hug her arms tightly, "when it comes to goosebumps."
The difficult years of the past have long been reduced to clouds and light winds, and on the wind and rain basketball road, more dreamers have emerged behind them.
Occasionally, the couple would go to the scene of the basketball season of Yao Foundation Hope Primary School to guide the children to play ball. The flame of Chinese basketball, the blood loyalty of Chinese sports people to the country, the persistence of their dreams, from Yao Zhiyuan and his wife to Yao Ming to thousands of young teenagers, life is endless, and the spark is inherited.
Text editing: Tree text
New Media Editor: Lu Xingji
Issued: Peng Dong
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