□ Li Yue, a reporter from Henan Daily
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, taekwondo became the official sport of the Olympic Games for the first time, which also gave Chen Zhong, a Henan girl who was only 18 years old at the time, an opportunity to make history. In the women's 67 kg or higher final on September 30 of that year, Chen Zhongliked Russia's Ivanova won the first Olympic gold medal for China and the first Olympic gold medal in the history of taekwondo in the world. Four years later, at the Athens Olympics, the more mature Chen Zhong became the first defending Olympic champion in taekwondo.
Chen Zhong, who was born in Jiaozuo, the hometown of basketball, was sent by his parents to an amateur sports school to learn basketball at a very young age. In 1995, she was photographed by Coach Chen Liren and entered peking university sports and sports school to study taekwondo. As a late-started sport in China, Chen Zhong was able to kick out a world in just four years, and the hardships in it can be imagined. For this sport, where footwork accounts for 70%, in order to exercise technical movements, Chen Zhong has to kick sandbags hundreds of times a day. According to her, in the first few years, she did not have to cut her nails at all, because of the strict training, she often let the nail caps of her feet turn over, and she could only pull them out and wrap them in tape to continue practicing.
Relying on the sharp footwork practiced by kicking sandbags, Chen Zhong, who debuted in the Olympic Arena, won his first international championship. When Chen Zhong began to push for more medals, a serious injury to her right knee in 2002 caused her to plummet. "At that time, every time I came down from training, I could pull out a large tube of fluid in my knee. Later, I really couldn't lift my legs, and Coach Chen Liren also designed a 'lying down' training method for me. Recalling this scene, Chen Zhong still complained that Coach Chen was really "fierce". In the confrontation with the right leg injury, Chen Zhong also honed her left leg skills and hand kung fu, a more comprehensive technique, and finally let her successfully defend her title at the Athens Olympic Games. Since then, he won the gold medal at the Doha Asian Games in 2006 and the World Championship in 2007, and Chen Zhong became the first taekwondo "Grand Slam" winner to combine the olympic games, the World Cup and the World Championships.
The huge success on the field allowed Chen Zhong to confidently start her trip to the Olympic Triple Olympic Championships at the Beijing Olympic Games, and in the quarter-finals, she still took a 1:0 lead until the last moment. Just when the victory was almost decided, the British player Stevenson kicked Chen Zhong in the head with a front foot, when the four referees did not score the British player, and Chen Zhong finally won. However, the British team filed a complaint over the match, which was arbitrated and the award was changed to Stevenson's victory. Chen Zhong also lost the qualification for the semi-finals. Since then, although the Chinese team has filed a complaint again, it has not been able to change the arbitration result.
In this way, he lost the gold medal he most wanted to win, and Chen Zhong was full of regret and unwillingness: "Not winning the triple crown became the biggest regret in my life, and the result of the final change of judgment gave me a heavy blow to my heart, and now I think about it or I will be sad." However, I think my performance is not perfect. Thanks to this failed experience, I understand that my life has another kind of fulfillment because of regrets. ”
Chen Zhong, who retired in 2009 with regret, did not leave the sports industry. After studying in the United States for a year, she chose to return to her alma mater, Beijing Sport University, as deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee. Today, Chen Zhong, who is already the general secretary of the party branch of the China Basketball Academy of Beijing Sport University, still returns to the taekwondo training ground from time to time. Under her influence, Chen Zhong's younger son also began to like the sport. Chen Zhong said that looking at the children who train seriously every day, she feels that she has never said goodbye to the sport of taekwondo.