Chinese freestyle skiing aerial skills team finally reaches the top of the world
2022-02-18 08:41:34Source: Xi’an Daily
On February 17, the champion Chinese player Qi Guangpu at the medal presentation ceremony. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Xu Chang)
■Xinhua News Agency reporter
The cold night is boiling, and the heart is also burning!
In the past several Beijing Winter Olympics competition days, the Chinese freestyle skiing aerial skills team competed in Chongli in the national attention, and finally won 2 golds and 1 silver in the three events of mixed team, women’s individual and men’s individual.
Aerial skills have always been the traditional strengths of Chinese snow sports, but behind the momentum of the Beijing Winter Olympics is the persistence and hard work of a group of veterans and newcomers, throwing away injuries and tears, and chasing dreams and hopes. , so that China will finally be on top of the world in this project.
Mixed group project: An outbreak brews in regret
31-year-old Xu Mengtao, 30-year-old Jia Zongyang, and 31-year-old Qi Guangpu have been working together with aerial skills projects for more than 10 years. Time occasionally shines, sometimes dim, and they all finally made it to the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The mixed team of aerial skills is a new addition to the Beijing Winter Olympics. Compared with individual competitions, team competitions require more balanced abilities of all members, and the competition system, which is determined by one jump, requires all members to perform more stably. In the bright as day, the performance of each individual will determine the fate of the team.
The mixed team finals kicked off on the evening of February 10. Xu Mengtao, who went to the Winter Olympics for the fourth time, withstood the pressure and gave the team the first win. Then Jia Zongyang jumped and made a mistake. Under the attention of the audience, Qi Guangpu made a perfect last jump, but it did not help in the overall score.
After the game, Qi Guangpu’s “why did the last jump not increase the difficulty” became the focus of attention. He responded that he had been preparing in the athlete waiting area. Before starting, he did not know the scoring situation on the spot. He focused on his own movements. Before starting, he thought about doing his own movements well.
In fact, you don’t need to care about Jia Zongyang’s failure in the competition, nor Qi Guangpu’s inability to turn the tide. A heavy Winter Olympics silver medal is already a reward for the years. The regrets left in the collective project also allowed the aerial skills team to accumulate strength to brew and explode on individual projects.
Women’s Solo Project: Silence Ushers in Bloom
The night when the finals of the women’s individual event arrived was another night when Xu Mengtao touched her dream. On the evening of February 14, 12 of the world‘s top female aerialists, including Xu Mengtao, came to the platform slope. No one can measure how many ups and downs this Chinese girl has gone through for her dream.
The final is divided into two rounds, and the 6 players with the best results in the first round will enter the final match in the second round. The gold medal ownership is simple and cruel, and the winner is determined by one jump. In the suffocating last round of jumps, the two Chinese women did not back down in the face of strong opponents – they both challenged the most difficult move of 4.293, let it go!
Kong Fanyu took the lead and regretted the mistake.
Xu Mengtao came on stage later. Just like in the first round, she did not cheer for herself while standing above the three-week stage. On the big screen at the scene, her eyes were firm and bright. Sliding, jumping, a white light cuts through the night sky, vacates, flips, and lands steadily and successfully stops!
At 108.61 points, the crowd and music sounded.
As rivals Caldwell and Laura Peele both failed the difficult move, Xu Mengtao turned around to celebrate, winning the coveted gold medal for herself and China – the first winter in Chinese women’s aerial skills. Olympic Gold Medal.
After the game, Xu Mengtao, the “Golden Flower of China”, knelt in the snow wearing the national flag. The scene of her tearful face turning around and roaring spread all over the world. The hard work that ordinary people can’t imagine has finally returned to the bloom of this moment, and the arrival of the fifth gold medal of the Chinese delegation in the Beijing Winter Olympics has also increased the confidence of teammates before the men’s individual event.
Men’s Individual Event: Winning Under Pressure
On the night of February 16, the temperature in Genting Ski Park dropped to minus 22 degrees Celsius. Qi Guangpu and Jia Zongyang, two Chinese Olympic “veterans of the four dynasties”, advanced to the final of the night with the first and second results in the preliminaries respectively. Just after the Lantern Festival, there is a full moon in the distance on the slope of the diving platform.
In the men’s aerial skills event, Qi Guangpu used to be the “world‘s most difficult player”, but the Winter Olympics not only required difficult movements, but also high-quality performance – in the first round of the finals, the entry threshold quickly soared to more than 120 points. Fortunately, Qi Guangpu and Jia Zongyang played stably and successfully advanced.
In the final round, at the top of Mount Huashan, 5 of the 6 players chose the most difficult move in the world with a difficulty factor of 5.0. Jia Zongyang played, but he made a mistake.
Then Qi Guangpu, also wearing a white snow suit and a golden helmet, appeared on the stage, and he jumped high – for a moment, the golden dot seemed to touch the sky. With a perfect posture in the air and a steady landing action, Qi Guangpu raised his arms and shouted while sliding.
After waiting for a long time, Qi Guangpu’s final score was displayed on the big screen: 129.00 points. The two players who appeared later had flaws, and Ilya Brove, who finally appeared, was less difficult to move. champion! The seventh gold medal of the Chinese delegation! The Chinese aerial skills team won the men’s Winter Olympics gold medal again after a lapse of 16 years!
This is a perfect match. Qi Guangpu, who is a world champion and a World Cup champion, has fulfilled his dream and helped the Chinese freestyle skiing aerial skills team to achieve success in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Applause and salute! Generation after generation of aerial technicians, with the attitude of a shocker, China has always been in the forefront of the world in this project. Tenacious and courageous! Thanks to this generation of aerialists, let the Chinese people see this miracle engraved on the Beijing Winter Olympics.
(Reporters Yang Fan, Xia Liang, Pan Yi, Zhu Qing, Lu Xingji, Li Linhai, Chen Di) (Xinhua News Agency, Hebei Chongli, February 17)