18 hours Two important moments for the post-00s player Diniger

On the afternoon of February 5, at the Zhangjiakou National Cross-Country Skiing Center, Chinese athlete and Uyghur girl Diniger Yilamujiang competed in the women's double chase in cross-country skiing. China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Li Zhengfeng / photo

Becoming the main torchbearer of the world's top sports events and welcoming the first Winter Olympic journey of his sports career, in 18 hours, Diniger Yilamujiang experienced two important moments in his life.

At 10:15 p.m. on February 4, 2022, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics entered a moment of great anticipation, cross-country skier Diniger Yilamujiang and Nordic biathlete Zhao Jiawen joined hands to embed the last torch into the main torch platform, thus "lighting" the main torch of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Two post-00s active athletes and a "micro-fire" that breaks through tradition are in the center of a huge snowflake, and this "big snowflake" is "condensed" by the small snowflake guide card of 91 participating countries and regions, and the young them interpret the slogan of this competition, "Together to the future".

When the main torch burned, The Dinegger family, 3,000 kilometers away, gathered in front of the TV to wipe their tears, but for the Xinjiang girl who will turn 21, she must precipitate the excitement as soon as possible and awaken the necessary concentration during the race, because 17.5 hours later, in the project that is most likely to produce the first gold of the Winter Olympics, she will appear as a rookie participating in the Winter Olympics for the first time. The only time left for her to complete the mood change was the short distance from Beijing to the Zhangjiakou Division overnight.

At 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 5, Diniger was once again "surrounded by the world." Standing at the starting point of the cross-country skiing women's double chase (7.5 km traditional technology + 7.5 km free technology), she is surrounded by 65 athletes from 24 countries and regions, including 4 Nordic veterans who have participated in the Winter Olympics and are determined to win, as well as Olympic recruits like her, each with different goals, for Diniger, "play the best level, win glory for the country, and strive to create history".

Cross-country skiing is known as the "snow marathon", this sport originated in Northern Europe has also become a highly valued winter Olympic battlefield in many Nordic countries, and athletes from Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and the Russian Olympic Committee have long been rubbing their hands. However, relatively speaking, cross-country skiing is the weakness of the Chinese team, and there is still a big gap with the strong team, and it is not easy to create history.

In order to achieve a breakthrough in this project, in 2018, the mainland set up the first cross-country skiing national training team to select talents from bicycles, marathons, rowing and other projects. The establishment of this team also brought together Han, Tibetan, Uyghur, Pumi and other multi-ethnic ice and snow athletes, Diniger is the representative of the Uyghur ethnic group, and her hometown is xinjiang Altay, where human skiing originated.

Altay in northern Xinjiang has a harsh winter and human activity as early as the Neolithic period, and in 2005, a petroglyph of the Ancestors of the Altai Mountains pedaling snowboards and holding a single pole ski hunt was found here, and experts estimate that it is about 10,000 years ago or even earlier. At the beginning of 2015, more than 30 ski history experts and scholars from 18 countries and regions jointly issued the Altay Declaration, which made Xinjiang Altay the "Origin of Human Skiing" internationally recognized.

This place, which snows for more than 6 months a year, is naturally a cradle for alpine skiers and cross-country skiers. In the 1980s, Diniger's father, Iramjan Mulagi, was a cross-country skier and finished third in a national cross-country skiing competition in 1993. Since then, the local area has vigorously promoted youth ice and snow sports, and Yilamujiang has served as the coach of a youth cross-country skiing team, and there are only 3 girls among the more than 20 trained children, and Diniger is one of them.

The father-daughter experience is quite similar to the Indian sports movie WrestleMania, Daddy. At that time, the training conditions were difficult, the training ground was in the mountains on the outskirts of the city, Yilamujiang had to personally drive back and forth many times to pull all the team members into the field, and the traditional technology required a grooved, 3-kilometer-long snow track, but also had to rely on everyone to line up in a horizontal line, incarnated as a "snow press", with the help of its own gravity to move out of the snow track step by step, sometimes snow pressing work for up to seven or eight hours.

The days of training with her father made skiing the most important experience of Dinigl's growing up, but when she participated in the 12th National Winter Games, the excitement of standing on the field really made her look forward to the podium and prepare for professional ski training. With the support of her father, she quickly received attention and was eventually able to join the cross-country skiing national training team and accompany the team to Norway for external training. In the days of training abroad, her father is still her spiritual pillar, and will give her advice on training and competition, which is the most rapid period of Diniger's growth.

The 2019 FIS China Beijing Cross-Country Skiing Points Grand Prix was held at the "Bird's Nest", and Diniger, who had been training for one year, won her most memorable race. As a Young Chinese Player, she stood on the podium in a group of European and American good players, and this women's individual sprint silver medal was the first medal won by a Chinese athlete in the Cross-Country Skiing International Competition.

At the time, at the age of 18, she was very excited, and she proudly introduced her hometown of Altay and her father as a cross-country ski instructor, "I have been exposed to cross-country skiing before, but the real professional training began in 2014, and it has been four or five years now." Through scientific training, my skills and physical fitness have been growing, and I can't even believe that I can get a silver medal in this competition, which shows that my training is very effective. ”

This breakthrough gave Diniger confidence, and in the subsequent training, she was more involved in adjusting the training. In the women's 5 events at the SPA Hot Springs Station in November 2021, she won three championships and won the women's points championship. Once when Diniger took the lead in crossing the finish line, his father Yi lamujiang, who was waiting at the finish line, opened his arms and hugged her tightly.

Before the Winter Olympics, Diniger said that returning to China after last year's foreign training " has a kind of warmth back home, and this atmosphere of unity makes me more motivated and excited to go into training." In order to provide the best guarantee for athletes, according to Zhang Bei, the leader and head coach of the Chinese cross-country skiing team, the team has hired technical representatives from Germany and Russia to help the team members improve their understanding of the rules, and there are Chinese and foreign personnel in the physical fitness and scientific research team to jointly improve the quality of athlete training, and at the same time, they are also actively in line with international standards in training, and finally obtained the qualifications for all 12 sub-events of the Winter Olympics.

In today's first event, all four Chinese girls finished, of which Li Xin finished 33rd and Chi Chunxue followed closely at 34th place, which was a significant improvement from their 51st and 55th places at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, although the two youngsters Diniger and Bayani Garin finished 43rd and 46th respectively, but for The relatively late start of Chinese cross-country skiing, the progress in this event has been completed from 2 participants in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics to 4 people four years ago. And in the relay event after that, Diniger and his teammates still have the opportunity to attack better positions and achieve breakthroughs.

This newspaper Chongli February 5, 2017

China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Liang Xuan Source: China Youth Daily

Source: China Youth Daily