Sledding is one of the fastest events in the Winter Olympics snow competition, and it is also a highly dangerous and professional event. Bobsleigh, which originated in Switzerland and Northern Europe, has been an official sport since the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. The Winter Olympic bobsleigh race uses the same track as the bobsleigh and the steel frame bobsleigh, but the starting point is different, the whole course of the bobsleigh race is about 11 to 18 corners, and in some of the more difficult corners, the centrifugal force felt by the player exceeds 5G, which is comparable to the centrifugal force felt by the F1 driver when turning. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Bobsleigh Race was held at the National Bobsleigh Center known as the "Snow Dragon" in the Yanqing race area.
Snow Dragon
Competition: 4 gold medals Waiting for the brave
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Bobsleigh Competition features four sub-events: men's single sled, women's single bobsleigh, double bobsleigh and bobsleigh team relay.
The single event is skied 4 times, the double event is skated twice, and the relay event requires the completion of the men's singles, women's singles and doubles events. In relay races, there is a relay board above the finish line, and the athlete needs to sit up and beat the bullet board before passing the finish line, so as to open the starting baffle at the starting point. All events are ranked by the total time spent per coast. Bobsleigh racing rules allow athletes to increase their counterweights, but if the counterweights exceed the prescribed range, athletes are disqualified.
China's Huang Yebo/Peng Junyue in a team relay on November 21. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen Yichen
The newly released "Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games Competition Schedule Final Edition" shows that the bobsleigh competition has a total of 6 competition days, starting from February 5, the first is the men's single bobsleigh competition, the first gold medal will be produced on February 6, the gold medal for the women's single bobsleigh will be produced on February 8, the double bobsleigh final will be held on February 9, and the gold medal of the team relay will be attributed to February 10.
According to the Rules for the Issuance of Olympic Seats by the International Bobsleigh Federation, the top 32 Olympic points players in the men's and women's single bobsleigh will directly qualify for the Winter Olympics, with a maximum of 3 people per country or region. After that, the maximum number of places in each country or region is 1 person, for a total of 35 people, until the end is issued. According to the final points ranking, Germany, Austria, the United States, Latvia, Italy and Russia won 3 seats in each individual event, and the main players of each team have the strength to impact the highest podium. There are 17 seats for the double bobsleigh, with Germany, Latvia, Austria and Russia each winning 2 seats.
The Chinese team won one seat each in the men's singles, women's singles, doubles and team relay events. In the men's single bobsleigh event, Fan Duoyao was 40th in points, Bao Zhenyu was 46th, Alabati Ahmet was 48th and Jubay Sekyi was 49th. In the women's singles bobsleigh event, Wang Peixuan ranked 38th, and the other three Chinese players, Guli Jienati AdikYumu, ranked 45th, Hu Huilan ranked 46th, and Liu Xinyi ranked 48th. China's only double bobsleigh pair, Huang Yebo/Peng Junyue, ranked 29th. Because the Chinese team won the Olympic seat in all three individual events, the team relay was automatically shortlisted. According to the selection method previously released by the Winter Games Center of the General Administration, the athletes with the highest ranking of individual points in the bobsleigh will directly enter the Winter Olympic lineup.
Development pattern: Germany and Austria lead the strongest between victory and defeat
Many Chinese spectators learned about the sport of "flying on the ground" through the Bobsleigh International Training Week held at the National Bobsleigh Center in November 2021 and the Meet in Beijing 2021-2022 International Bobsleigh Federation Bobsleigh World Cup. It was also in the "Snow Dragon" arena that people felt the strength of the German team in this event and the rise of young Austrian athletes.
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics bronze medalist and German star Johannes Ludwig and two teammates finished in the top three. In the double bobsleigh event, Germany's Egert/Beneken also won their first World Cup division. In the women's singles bobsleigh competition, Germany's winning favourites, Pyeongchang and Sochi Winter Olympics "double champion" Natalie Geisenberg, fell down in the first round of the skate and missed the medal, and 23-year-old Austrian teenager Madeleine Aigle beat another German team, World Championship gold medalist Julia Taubitz, to win her first World Cup title; another Austrian lisa Schulte won the bronze medal. In the team relay, the Austrian team, led by PyeongChang Winter Olympic gold medalist and Austrian bobsleigh star David Greischer, reached the podium.
Despite madeleine Aegler's impressive performance, it was difficult for austria to beat the star-studded German bobsleigh team at the Winter Olympics. In the women's singles sledding event, for example, three of the top four in the season overall standings are Germans, with Julia Taubitz tied for first place with Madeleine Aegler. The top two points in the men's singles bobsleigh season are both Germans. Germany's Egert/Benecken and Austria's Thomas Steu/Lorenz Kohler are tied for first place in the double bobsleigh table. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the German bobsleigh team's Tobias Alter and Tobias Wendel have won the Winter Olympics in Sochi and Pyeongchang, and they are also preparing for the third Winter Olympic gold medal.
The German bobsleigh team is powerful, but in the bobsleigh field where the victory is won by milliseconds, the winning general can only be a legend. Many players from the United States, Italy, Latvia and Russia have the strength to compete for the gold medal.
The current situation on the mainland: Starting late and catching up
In the men's single bobsleigh event at the Yanqing Station of the 2021-2022 International Bobsleigh Federation Bobsleigh World Cup in "Meet in Beijing", Chinese player Fan Duoyao made a historic breakthrough in the men's single bobsleigh event, but we must see that there is still a certain gap between Chinese athletes and the world's top athletes.
The Chinese team Fan Duoyao in the competition source national bobsleigh center venue running team
The bobsleigh project developed late on the mainland. In 2015, the bobsleigh national training team began to be formed, and after hard training and competition experience, athletes have made great progress in the level of competition and the understanding of the project. After qualifying for the Bobsleigh World Cup, Fan Duoyao and his teammates Hu Huilan, Huang Yebo and Peng Junyue won the ninth place in the World Cup team relay event, creating the best record in the history of the Chinese team in the World Cup event. Wang Peixuan broke into the main competition at the World Cup sochi station and finished 25th, making a new breakthrough in the Chinese bobsleigh women's single event. The members of the National Bobsleigh Training Team worked hard to achieve the goal of "participating in the whole project".
From the selection of cross-discipline athletes to form a training team, to the completion of the goal of "full-project participation", the bobsleigh training team only took 6 years. Fan Duoyao was a former cross-country skier, Wang Peixuan practiced sprinting and javelin, and Peng Junyue from Guangdong was a basketball player before. In the process of cross-border cross-border projects, this group of young people faces huge challenges.
Peng Junyue said that when he first started practicing sledding, he did not once smoothly slide the entire track, either rolling over or falling. In order to communicate more with foreign teachers to improve his technical ability, he trained during the day and learned English at night. "I have a clearer mind and a lot more freedom on the sled than when I first started training. Participating in the Winter Olympics, I hope to be able to do what I have practiced over the years and skate with a relaxed mind. Peng Junyue said.
For Fan Duoyao, the first thing to change is to change physical fitness and weight, "cross-country skiing is pure endurance, and sledding tests pure explosiveness." The bobsleigh project required weight to gain acceleration, at first I was very thin, how to eat, and then I was injured once, and after two months of recuperation, my weight finally rose to more than 80 kilograms. "Fan Duoyao is also looking forward to a breakthrough at the Winter Olympics." This is the first bobsleigh track in China, I think it is the best track in the world, and I hope that I can show my best form in the race. "Fan Duoyao said that seeing the top players from abroad in the World Cup competition are very calm and calm, treating the game as training, their good mentality is worth learning." I see that there is still a big gap between myself and them, there are a lot of deficiencies, the top players handle every corner detail very well, and I have to work hard to improve the technical details. Fan Duoyao said.
Wang Zhonglin, the leader of the bobsleigh national training team, said in an interview that although the "full project participation" has been achieved, compared with Germany, Austria, Italy and other countries, the strength of the Chinese bobsleigh team is still short. But he believes that driven by the Beijing Winter Olympics, bobsleigh sports will have a better development in China in the future. "With their own track, there will be more media and audiences who will learn about these projects. In the future, more children can participate in sports through a track, and the 'Snow Dragon' is of great significance to the development of China's snowmobile bobsleigh project. Wang Zhonglin said.