His movements on parallel bars have been evaluated by Japanese gymnastics legend Uchimura Hangping as "actions that only robots can make", and by the Olympic "hardware king" Zou Kai as "textbook level", he is Zou Jingyuan from Yibin, Sichuan.
On the afternoon of August 3, in the men's gymnastics parallel bars final of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Zou Jingyuan took the gold medal without suspense, and after winning the gymnastics world championships parallel bars twice, he finally won the coveted Olympic gold medal.
In the previous gymnastics men's team final competition, the Chinese team won the bronze medal, and Zou Jingyuan played well, scoring the highest score in the parallel bars competition, making great contributions to the Chinese team's medal.
Born in 1998, Zou Jingyuan is a native of Cuiping District, Yibin City. When I was a child, because of my poor health, I always had infusions and drips, I went to practice sports, and I was just in time for the city sports school to go to the urban area to play the Golden Street Kindergarten to select athletes, and Li Xiaobing, who was the gymnastics coach of the city sports school at the time, caught Zou Jingyuan at a glance. "His body conditions are more suitable, thin, his limbs are more symmetrical, and his body shape is very suitable for the selection of gymnastics projects."
Li Xiaobing recalled that in the subsequent upper limb test, Li Xiaobing was pleased to find that the 3-year-old's upper limb strength was also very prominent, and the physical coordination was also good.
After Zou Jingyuan entered the Municipal Amateur Sports School in 2002, he showed stronger willpower and comprehension ability than his peers, and "hard work" was Li Xiaobing's deepest impression of Zou Jingyuan. In gymnastics training, flexibility, endurance and explosiveness are the basis of training, leg pressing, running mountains, short sprints have become "commonplace", many times in order to practice endurance, the handstand is 20 minutes, not only the training clothes are completely wet, even the ground is shed a lot of sweat.
According to Zou Jingyuan's mother, Liu Liqun, Zou Jingyuan has been very motivated since he was a child, and he has to try his best to fight for the small red flowers issued by the kindergarten every time.
During the amateur sports school, Zou Jingyuan took the initiative to press his legs when he went home in addition to training. During the 3-year training, Zou Jingyuan's strength increased, his body shape became more and more suitable for gymnastics, his movements became more beautiful and smooth, and he won many awards in children's gymnastics competitions.
In 2005, at the age of 7, Zou Jingyuan entered the Sichuan Provincial Sports School to study gymnastics. "Every day in training, he would take pictures of his movements, and then play them back, and before going to bed at night, he would have to brush up what he had learned that day." Liu Liqun said.
"Yuan Yuan has been self-motivated since childhood, can endure hardships, has particularly high self-requirements, and will insist on training even if there is a slight injury." Cao Zhiguo served as Zou Jingyuan's gymnastics coach for 7 years. He recalled that when Zou Jingyuan entered the Sichuan Provincial Gymnastics Team, he conducted a big training camp and asked the young players to stand upside down. Ordinary team members can only mention about 20, Zou Jingyuan mentioned more than 100, until the coach called a stop, and he was only 6 years old at this time.
From The Amateur Sports School in Yibin City to the Sichuan Provincial Sports School, and then to enter the national team in 2012, "diligence" and "hard work" have always been the labels exclusive to Zou Jingyuan.
"In parallel bars, he's not only strong, he's very strong." In the eyes of national team teammate Zhang Chenglong, Zou Jingyuan is like a machine that never stops. In each training session, Zou Jingyuan not only completed every action with high standards, but also trained one or two times that of other teammates. "He's a perfectionist. Almost every action is pursued to the extreme. Sometimes, we are afraid that he is injured and have to strictly control his training volume. Olympic champion and assistant coach in charge of Zou Jingyuan Teng Haibin said.
At the 2015 Youth Olympic Qualifiers, Zou Jingyuan began to emerge, winning the individual all-around, parallel bars, pommel horse and hoop titles, and free gymnastics also won second place. At the Fuzhou National Youth Games in October, he still scored a high score of 14.7 with a high score of 14.7 despite injuring his right ankle.
In 2017, from the Youth Games to the National Games to the World Championships, all the competitions in which Zou Jingyuan participated, the gold medal in the parallel bars event was not left behind. At the Gymnastics World Championships in October, with a difficulty score of 6.8 and a completion score of 9.1, he defeated the Rio Olympic double bar champion and Ukraine's Viniaev with a high score of 15.900 to win the championship, becoming another "parallel bar king" in China!
Entering 2018, Zou Jingyuan won the gold medals of the national championships and the Asian Games, came to the Doha World Championships, Zou Jingyuan's parallel bars are still invincible, the qualifiers locked in the first place with 15.800 points, after winning the men's parallel bars gold medal with 16.433 points without suspense, the Olympic "hardware king" Zou Kai commented that his stretching and light action can be called "textbook level".
In the men's team final, the Chinese team trailed by 1.9 points to enter the penultimate parallel bars, and Zou Jingyuan scored 16.200 with a set of actions with a difficulty of up to 7.0 and zero mistakes, achieving a 0.049 rebound for the Chinese team and winning the championship. After the game, his parallel bars were evaluated by gymnastics "Evergreen" Uchimura Hanghei as: only robots can make moves!
Since the establishment of men's parallel bars at the 10th World Championships in 1934, Zou Jingyuan has become the fifth player in the history of the World Championships to win the parallel bars championship in the history of the World Championships after Japan's Yongsan, the former Soviet Union's Aldemov, China's Li Jing and Li Xiaopeng.
In 2019, after the Japanese gymnastics team and the Chinese gymnastics team held two joint training sessions, Uchimura Hangping bluntly said that Zou Jingyuan was a once-in-a-century genius, "He was super concentrated during training, and his eyes were very lethal." His whole set of action difficulty composition and ornamentation are very strong, other players can not imitate, let alone can not refer to. His technique and expressiveness have also reached the realm of the 'dimensional world'. ”
In July this year, after fierce selection, Zou Jingyuan was selected into the list of Chinese gymnastics team participants in the Tokyo Olympic Games, and Zou Jingyuan, who has won the champions of large and small gymnastics competitions, finally stepped onto the stage of the Olympic Games.
"Zou Jingyuan's personal level is already the top in the world and he is a very competitive player, but how to play his level in the competition is a compulsory course for him to break through from world champion to Olympic champion." Zou Kai said.
Before the game, Zou Jingyuan also said that his current physical condition and preparation for the battle are very good, and he will not fail in his mission and win glory for the country! In the end, Zou Jingyuan lived up to expectations and won the gold medal steadily.
Upstream journalist Tang Hao