Under the epidemic environment, long-term "closed-loop" training camps make national sports teams appear particularly mysterious. How are they preparing for the war? How are injuries controlled? In the absence of competition with foreign opponents, can they still have a plan in mind? This morning, the Chinese national badminton team made its first appearance in a long time, and the place of appearance was Shanghai.

During the break between activities, Shi Yuqi joked while chatting with his teammates, "I have almost forgotten what it was like the last time I entered the downtown area." The last time Guoyu went abroad to participate in an international competition was in March last year. At the British Open, the team entered a super long closed training state after returning to China.

Strategic withdrawal is still controllable

Expected to return to international competition in May

Affected by the international epidemic situation, many national sports teams are experiencing In order to strategically withdraw from the competition, Guoyu is also one of them.

In an interview today, Zhang Jun, chairman of the Chinese Badminton Association, said that such a strategic choice will not have a particularly big impact on the Olympic points of national badminton players. "Due to the epidemic, we gave up several tournaments, which will have a certain impact on the world rankings. Looking at it now, we mainly did not participate in one Swiss Open Olympic points tournament. The impact on Olympic points is not special. We are considering allowing the players to better maintain their points and ensure their health.”

In total, Guoyu has been out of the international competition for a year, and the last time he went abroad to participate in an international competition was last year. British Open.

The Sudirman Cup World Badminton Mixed Team Championships originally scheduled to be held in Suzhou in May has been officially postponed, which will affect the national badminton Olympic points battle to a certain extent. The International Olympic Committee has just confirmed recently that the Singapore Open, which will be held from June 1 to 6, will be the last Olympic qualifying event for badminton in the Tokyo Olympics.

In view of this, Zhang Jun said that they currently set the expected time for returning to the international arena in May. "Our current plan is to first participate in Malaysia in May, then the Singapore Open and the Asian Championships. Before that, there will be the National Games preliminaries in China in early April, and all team members will return to their respective local teams to compete." "We are very urgent. I really hope that the players can participate in the competition and find out the status of the competition.”

According to the current world rankings, the national badminton team can reach full participation in men’s singles, women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. However, in the men's doubles event, only one pair of players ranks among the top eight, and according to regulations, they can only get one ticket.

Facing difficulties in special times

Relying on remote video to find out the opponents' bottom line

Zhang Jun said that in the past year, many international competitions were not held. During the training process, they mainly exercised the combat capabilities of the players through their own simulated confrontations, watching video materials and game videos of their opponents, and the Super League and National Championships held last year.

"Now we can't see the performance of each national team player at close range, but now there are good video recordings and game broadcasts. One of us is through the original (opponent information), and the other is through Video recording, etc. to carry out targeted training," added Xia Xuanze, vice chairman of the Chinese Badminton Association.

New captain? Zheng Siwei

Previously, the candidate for the new national badminton captain has been in a state of uncertainty, but today, this suspense has finally come to an end. The captain is Zheng Siwei.

Zheng Siwei is the world's number one national badminton ace player in mixed doubles. Just last week, he just celebrated his 24th birthday.

When talking about the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, the new captain said that the biggest difficulty at this stage is the lack of actual combat training with international opponents.

"Preparations so far should be considered smooth. The only difficulty is that because of the (epidemic) we have not had the opportunity to participate in some international competitions. Through competitions, we can better discover some of the differences between us and foreign opponents. There is a gap. But let’s look forward to the Olympics,” Zheng Siwei said.

The southern training camp will help adjust

Shi Yuqi has recovered 90% to 100% from his injury

Only training, no competition, in the long run will easily cause athletes to suffer from strain injuries. Xia Xuanze said that such a situation did occur in the national badminton team before, but after updating the supporting "training + treatment" plan and moving the training location to the warmer south (Lingshui, Hainan and Jinjiang, Fujian), this situation Things have improved.