Xinhua News Agency, Fuzhou, August 16th: Behind the Olympic athletes, a grassroots youth sports school's "big waves" (Part 1)
This summer, the wonderful performances of Chinese athletes at the Tokyo Olympics The performance makes the audience excited. They are the best in the sports world, and some of them have entered sports schools since childhood and embarked on the road of sports.
Li Fabin, Huang Dongping and others who graduated from the Fujian Provincial Youth Sports School won this Olympic championship. The teachers and students of the sports school witnessed the glorious moment in front of the big screen in the gymnasium. These "seedlings" who are still growing up in training day after day are also the youthful appearance of champion athletes. How will they embrace the future?
(Subtitle) The road to the "top of the pyramid" starts here
Every year, the coaches of the sports school will routinely go to the grassroots to select young talents, or from all over the province. Find out in the competition. This is how Li Fabin and Huang Dongping were selected to the Fujian Provincial Youth Sports School 17 years ago.
Li Fabin from Shuitou, Nan'an, Quanzhou was still an 11-year-old boy. Chen Xiaoming, the weightlifting coach of the Provincial Sports School, clearly remembers the first time he met Li Fabin at the Nan'an Youth Sports School. He was thin and weighed only 29.5 kilograms. He could snatch more than 20 kilograms and clean and jerk more than 40 kilograms. "This result is not good, but his body flexibility He has strong coordination and is a good seedling."
In terms of talent selection, different projects have their own characteristics. This tests the coaches' ability to "recognize people with a keen eye" and discover children with potential. In addition to basic physical fitness, they also have explosive power, coordination, hard work and hard-working spirit.
Most of the children who have just arrived at the sports school are in their teens. They study cultural classes for half a day and train for the other half. "The intensity of training during the body-building stage cannot be too high. It should focus on laying foundation and technical training. Trying to strengthen the body will be counterproductive." Chen Xiaoming emphasized, "The accumulation at this time will determine how far you can go in the future, and the requirements must be strict."
Li Fabin recalled that when he was a child, he was naughty and playful and was often punished by the coach, but he was eager to be praised by the coach. Chasing excellent results, he showed his extraordinary ability in weightlifting early on. At the 2006 National Children's Weightlifting Championships, Li Fabin won the first place in the snatch, clean and jerk, total score, and individual total score.
In sports schools, children compete against each other in order to obtain "tickets" to professional teams, and only by persisting to the end can they become truly strong.
Once, Li Fabin was kicked out of the field by the coach because he was out of shape during training. Suffering a blow, he also felt discouraged because his performance was difficult to break through, and he wrote a long letter to his coach saying that he wanted to retire. Chen Xiaoming understood the psychological fluctuations of children at this stage and hurriedly talked to him and explained: "Criticizing you is just a way of irritating the generals. We cannot be satisfied with the current results. We will win the world championship in the future!"
The world champion Goals have always inspired Li Fabin. After five years of training at the sports school, he was selected to the provincial sports team and officially became a professional athlete. Three years later, he was selected for the national team. After several ups and downs, he achieved his current achievements.
According to statistics, the proportion of students sent by Fujian Provincial Sports Schools to provincial professional teams is about 35%. The country has produced 9 Olympic champions and more than 60 world champions. Among them, weightlifting is Fujian's traditional advantage. The sports school has trained world-class weightlifters such as Shi Zhiyong, Deng Wei, and Wu Jingbiao. Badminton is also one of the sports with the highest transfer rate of talents from sports schools to professional teams. In the past, there was "Grand Slam" player Lin Dan, and now there is badminton mixed doubles Olympic champion Huang Dongping.
Huang Dongping’s coach Chen Hong said that this is a fine tradition passed down from generation to generation, and it relies more on personal hard work and practice. For example, Huang Dongping started learning badminton at the city sports school at the age of 7, entered the provincial sports school at the age of 11, and was selected for the provincial team at the age of 13. It is not easy to get to the top of the "pyramid", and the higher you go, the greater the fluctuations and the fiercer the competition.
In the eyes of coaches, competitive sports have a life cycle. If they fail to achieve an upward leap at a certain point in time, they will face diversion and find another way.
(To be continued)