Infographic Wang Bingyu in the game. Photo by China News Service reporter Hou Yu
China News Service, Beijing, November 22 Title: China's famous curling player Wang Bingyu announced his retirement: He once wanted to play for a lifetime
Author Xing Chong
"Curling, 18 years, from a little careless to the world champion, once thought about playing like this for a lifetime, thinking about the way he stood in the 2022 arena..." Despite this, the 34-year-old Chinese curling star Wang Bingyu announced his retirement through social media on the 22nd.
Wang Bingyu was born in 1984 in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, to an ice sports family, the son of an ice hockey coach. In 2000, at the age of 16, Wang Bingyu came into contact with curling by chance when she was in middle school, and began an 18-year curling career.
A piece of ice is in the jade pot, and the outside world always likes to describe this curling master in this way. She once said that her original name was Wang Yu, because of her father's profession, she added an "ice" to her name, but later she did not expect that this name was so suitable for herself.
Curling entered China in 1995, and it was only in 2003 that China officially established its first national team. This year, China joined the World Curling Federation, and since then, there have been Chinese faces in the world curling competition, and one of them is Wang Bingyu.
Wang Bingyu once recalled that when he first started practicing curling, he was on an ice hockey rink, and the base camp, the front throwing line and the T-shaped line on the field needed to be drawn by himself. Later, in order to improve her level, the Chinese team went to the curling powerhouse Canada to train in 2004, but what impressed her most was the defeat to an amateur senior team in Canada in a competition. "A few young people were beaten by white-haired old men without the ability to fight back."
Also in this year, Wang Bingyu led the team to win the second place in the Pan Pacific Regional Championship and qualified for the following year's World Championships; the Chinese curling team made its debut at the 2005 World Championships and finally ranked seventh; and in the 2006 World Championships, it rose to fifth place.
At the 2008 World Championships, the Chinese women's team reached the final for the first time. But against the Canadian team led by the famous Jones, the Chinese team lost 4:7, and this silver medal was also the first World Championship medal won by the Chinese women's team.
A year later, in Gangneung, South Korea, Wang Bingyu, Zhou Yan, Yue Qingshuang and Liu Yin reached the final again. But this time, they did not miss the opportunity to defeat Sweden 8:6 to win the first world championship in The history of Chinese curling.
Wang Bingyu became famous in one battle. From team formation to the top, they have walked the road of other countries for more than ten years or even decades in six years, and have also made the sport of curling enter the vision of more Chinese people.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the Chinese women's team, which participated in the Winter Olympics for the first time, lost to Sweden in the semifinals and lost hope of losing gold. At that time, Wang Bingyu kept crying, and even doubted at one point whether he could continue to serve as the "fourth base". After the final adjustment of form, the Chinese team defeated Switzerland and won a valuable bronze medal.
However, since then, the Chinese women's team has begun to decline, the Sochi Winter Olympics only ranked seventh, the former four golden flowers faded out of the field, and Wang Bingyu also returned to the family to marry and have children. At the same time, in addition to the old curling countries such as Canada and Sweden, the level of curling in Japan and South Korea is also improving, and the Chinese team has fallen into a trough.
In 2016, Wang Bingyu chose to make a comeback. She said that trying her best to get tickets to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was her determination to come back and it was also her decision. Although Wang Bingyu led the team to only rank 11th at the 2017 Beijing World Championships, they came out on top only half a year later in the losing tournament and successfully won the winter Olympic ticket.
However, in 2018, in Gangneung, South Korea, where Wang Bingyu once reached the summit, good luck did not come again. Although still calm and calm, some mistakes at key moments have also made the veteran who has been in the battlefield questioned. In the end, the Chinese team won the fifth place in the Winter Olympics.
After that, Wang Bingyu never appeared on the field again, and went to the Athletes Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee to serve. Now she has officially announced her retirement, and the golden generation of Chinese women's curling has officially ended.
Wang Bingyu confessed that he once fantasized about the way he stood in the 2022 arena, fantasized about the scene when he was 40 years old, and fantasized that he might meet old opponents when he participated in the elderly group competition. "Grateful for the company of you (curling) all the way, I am so lucky. Change positions, I still love you and am still willing to fight for you until the last moment. (End)