If it weren't for my flamboyant character, I wouldn't be where I am today.
On October 1, 2023, Wu Yanni participated in the women's 100-meter hurdles final of the track and field event of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Wu Yanni loves the purple track on the track and field at the Paris Olympics.
She originally liked purple, and this purple is so unconventional and unique on the track and field, and it seems to fit her unique appearance and personality very well. "Hopefully, this purple will be my lucky color." Wu Yanni said.
In an interview with "Chinese Philanthropist", Wu Yanni was nervously preparing for the Olympics. Athletics is traditionally held at the end of each Olympic Games, and Wu's event, the women's 100m hurdles, is one of the finales, with the final event taking place on August 11, the final day of the Games. As a result, she did not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics and arrived in Paris a little later.
As a 100m hurdler athlete, Wu Yanni's current results have stabilized at the forefront of Asia. At the National Track and Field Championships at the end of June this year, she ran 12.74 seconds to win the women's 100m hurdles championship, and also set a new personal best and a season's best in Asia. This August, she will be greeted by an Olympic arena that brings together the best of the world, and she is full of excitement and anticipation.
Purple runway at the Stade de France.
Exquisite makeup, flamboyant personality, and unruly face are also another reason why Wu Yanni has always become the focus of the arena. This trait, which is usually seen in foreign track and field athletes, is undoubtedly unconventional in the case of a Chinese girl, and her evaluation is mixed, so the controversy has always accompanied Wu Yanni's career.
"I think it's a really cool thing to be brave and have nothing wrong with girls." Wu Yanni said. In her opinion, a strong self-core is also the talent of the new generation of athletes.
Nature loves to run
Wu Yanni was born in 1997 in Fushun County, Zigong, Sichuan, to a police officer and a company employee. She has not been a quiet and well-behaved girl since she was a child, she is very active, spicy, and likes to fight unevenly. She also doesn't like to stay in the classroom and go to class obediently, preferring to play and play in the compound with a group of children, and even climb trees to dig hornet's nests and steal other people's pears.
Like many post-90s children, Wu Yanni also explored many interest classes in her childhood, practicing piano, guzheng, vocal music, and Olympiad mathematics. She began to practice folk dance at the age of three and a half, and she danced for nine years, and Wu Yanni at that time dreamed of becoming a dancer like Yang Liping.
Every day in the practice room, she pressed her legs, did movements, and practiced her body in front of the mirror, and now Wu Yanni recalls the days spent in the dance studio, and her evaluation is that "it is more difficult than practicing track and field later".
Later, Wu Yanni found that the dance was too quiet, and she liked the kind of "slapstick and noisy things". Later, when she practiced track and field, although she was also tired, she was able to persevere. "That's better than pulling the body and pulling the soft in the dance studio!" Wu Yanni told "Chinese Philanthropist" with a smile.
At first, I fell in love with track and field, but it was also by chance. When Wu Yanni was in the fifth grade, because her mother Xiong Yan was transferred, she was transferred to Zizhong County, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province. In 2009, she participated in the Zizhong County Games and signed up for the 100-meter event. While preparing for activities on the sidelines, she was noticed by Zhou Youjun, the coach of Zizhong County Youth Sports School. After several observations, Coach Zhou felt that Wu Yanni was very talented in track and field.
"I can see from the preparation that she has good coordination, flexibility and support, and when she runs 100 meters, I focus on her technique in running 100 meters, and her stride, cadence and forwardness are very good." Zhou Youjun recalled in a later interview.
In that day's competition, Wu Yanni won the championship. Zhou Youjun immediately found her and wanted her to enter a sports school, but Xiao Yanni didn't agree at first. The coach found Xiong Yan again, and finally moved her daughter through her mother's words. So, Wu Yanni transferred to Zizhong County Sports School, and later entered the Sichuan Provincial Athletics School. Later, she entered the Competitive Sports School of Beijing Sport University. In 2012, she was discovered by Coach Yang Hui and began to train in hurdles.
On June 25, 2021, Wu Yanni participated in the women's 100m hurdles final of the 2021 National Track and Field Championships.
For Yanni, who is born with a love of running, running is a kind of release - not wanting to sit for a long time, not wanting to follow the rules, not wanting to obey discipline, running means being liberated from the small classroom and having fun without constraints. But after becoming a professional track and field athlete, she realized that this kind of "professional running" and "wild running" are completely different concepts. Training needs to be professional and systematic, and there are extremely high requirements for basic physical fitness and movement skills. Hurdles are also more complex than general sprint events, requiring both the explosive power of a 100-meter athlete in the future and the endurance of a 200-meter and 300-meter athlete in the middle and late hurdles. A single hurdle movement should be efficient and reasonable, and the stability between the hurdle crossing and the rhythm of the landing run should also be considered.
"It's different from what I imagined, why are you so tired!" Wu Yanni told "Chinese Philanthropist", "At the beginning, I practiced track and field, purely because I wanted to skip one or two classes and write less homework. But when I got into track and field, I realized that it didn't seem to be like this. ”
However, in the eyes of the coach, Wu Yanni was born to eat this bowl of rice. "She has a strong psychological quality and is not stage frightened." This is what Yang Hui, who has coached for more than 30 years and is one of the coaches of the Chinese track and field team at the 2024 Paris Olympics, said about his apprentices.
Everyone also recognizes Wu Yanni as a "typical athlete character", cheerful, outgoing, crisp, likes competition, has a strong sense of competitiveness, and dares to show it.
Wu Yanni wants to win, that's her nature. The desire to win was so strong that she suffered from a herniated disc at the age of sixteen or seventeen. In her own words, she was still young at that time, and she was curious about the coach's new skills, so she wanted to impact the strength and see where her limits were, but because of the irregular movements, she injured her waist. That year, because of a herniated disc in her lumbar spine, she slept almost standing up throughout the winter training. When it's severe, I'll wake up in pain while sleeping, let alone normal training. At a national competition, she was so painful that she couldn't walk and was helped onto the track.
"In the end, you have to run, that's it, no way, you can't back down. You're practicing this, and you have to persevere. She said, "If you don't insist, what's the sportsmanship." ”
But she finally realized that training wisely, protecting herself, and reducing injuries are principles that professional athletes need to keep in mind at all times. Mature athletes must learn to make peace with the desire to win, building up in waiting.
Success and failure
In order to become a champion, Wu Yanni trained very hard, and in order to concentrate on training, she could hardly talk for two months, wearing headphones and practicing hard.
Her grades have also improved by leaps and bounds. In October 2015, Wu Yanni participated in the track and field competition of the first National Youth Games (formerly known as the National City Games, now merged into the National Student (Youth) Games) and won the championship in the women's 100m hurdles event with a time of 13.60 seconds. In the next five years, she ran the first and second places in the national competitions many times, and also won the title of international athlete across the class.
2021 is a very critical year in Wu Yanni's sports career, she has ushered in setbacks and experienced breakthroughs. That year, her goal was to compete in the Olympics and even reach the final, as the first female athlete from Chinese mainland to stand on the final track of the Olympic women's hurdles. "I just want to be the first girl!"
In June of that year, Wu Yanni ran 12.98 seconds and 12.87 seconds at the National Track and Field Championships and Olympic Trials and the National Track and Field Championships. The latter was also the best result in the Asian women's 100m hurdles that season and equalled the Japan national record in the event.
But this result did not bring Wu Yanni to the Tokyo Olympics, which opened at the end of July of that year. There are two ways to enter the Olympic track and field events: one is to meet the Olympic participation standards (commonly known as standard A) announced by the World Athletics Federation that year, and the other is to reach a certain standard in the world ranking of stage points. The A standard of the women's 100m hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics is 12.84 seconds, and Wu Yanni regrets not reaching it; Due to long-term external training, Wu Yanni delayed some points competitions, resulting in insufficient points.
The regret of passing by the Olympics made her regard the high-gold competitions of that year as very important, and she set her sights on the gold medal of the National Games in September. But in the final, Wu Yanni lost to her old opponent Lin Yuwei by 0.03 seconds and failed to win the championship.
Wu Yanni cried. She later recalled that the defeat was a big blow to herself, and she did not dare to look back at the video of the game. She didn't make it out of defeat for the next year, barely competing in any tournaments.
The so-called not breaking and not standing, it was also through that failure that Wu Yanni made up her mind to rebuild herself. After a long period of losing and digesting it, when Wu Yanni reappeared in the Circle, it was noticed that she had changed. The first thing that caught notice was her appearance: the girl began to wear elaborate makeup at every competition - to brighten her complexion with base makeup, to make her nose more three-dimensional, to put on her eyebrows and lips with full makeup, and sometimes to put glittering sequins around her eyes; The hairstyle is also carefully designed, with boxing braids, half-tied high ponytails, and a variety of headbands and hairpins......
On September 30, 2023, in the women's 100m hurdles preliminaries of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Wu Yanni advanced.
A brand-new Wu Yanni appeared, and controversy ensued. "Do you want to be an internet celebrity?" Some people even said that she had plastic surgery, while others questioned her for "not doing her job properly and not concentrating on training".
Wu Yanni faced those doubts head-on, and left a message under her social media account in response: "Some people are really speechless, and they don't let me lose weight?" In the 21st National Games, I was much fatter than I am now, and my sister cut a double eyelid + now pay attention to sun protection! Don't you love beauty anymore? Don't define me, I don't expect you to like me, I'm happy! ”
She admits that putting on makeup and becoming beautiful is just a way to build self-confidence. During that period of frustration, she resumed the dance she had learned as a child. She dances, reads, watches dramas, tidies up her room, and has afternoon tea with friends...... Wu Yanni, who was tense and silent, became more relaxed and more comfortable when she came back. She still wants to be a champion, but the gold medal is no longer the only thing in life.
She has a different understanding: life is only so many years, and it is a kind of success to be able to shine in her own field and realize her personal value in a limited time. "Athletics can bring me a lot of fun, and it doesn't have to be a championship for me to be 'successful'. If you can bring some people and influence some people, that is also a success. I don't think you can just judge heroes by success or failure. She told The Chinese Philanthropist.
The arena is still the same arena, there are wins and losses, ups and downs. In June 2023, Wu Yanni won the championship at the National Track and Field Championships with a time of 12.93 seconds, and at the same time qualified for the Hangzhou Asian Games. A month later, at the Asian Athletics Championships in Thailand, she was sentenced to run away, and she was not convinced to plead with the referee, but could not save the situation. Half a month later, at the Chengdu Universiade, she "resurrected" again, ran a personal best of 12.76 seconds, and reached the standard and went straight to the Paris Olympics (the A line is 12.77 seconds). In the Hangzhou Asian Games in September, Wu Yanni once again ran and fouled because she was too nervous, and there was no result.
"I've been through bottlenecks again and again, and I'm used to these things. As long as I have the right mentality, all kinds of things will not be difficult for me. Wu Yanni said. However, in her twenties, Wu Yanni is still competitive, but she has begun to accept defeat and doubts calmly.
Wu Yanni said that an important reason why she has become calm is that she feels more and more support and encouragement. This year, she won two titles on the World Athletics Continental Tour in Osaka and Tokyo, and then won the National Athletics Championships in Rizhao at the end of June in 12.74 seconds, setting a new personal best and a season's best time in Asia. She still remembers the shouts of "Wu Yanni come on" on the sidelines, including the voices of children, calling her name.
In May 2024, Wu Yanni took a group photo with coach Yang Hui outside the main venue after winning the women's 100m hurdles championship at the World Athletics Continental Tour in Tokyo. Photo / provided by the interviewee
"I can see that some of the viewers and fans support me unconditionally, and they don't care about my results. Many people say to me, 'Sister Ni, we don't care if you can win the championship or not, we only care if you are happy or tired'. I am very impressed, they are my biggest motivation. I'm also satisfied. Wu Yanni said.
Be yourself flamboyantly
is very flamboyant and self-contained, and has become Wu Yanni's label.
In the comment area under her Weibo and Douyin videos, you can often see all kinds of personal attacks and bad comments: "Pretend, continue to pretend", "Internet celebrity sister has successfully gained a wave of popularity". Her actions of pointing to the sky and praying for her grandfather's blessing before the game were described as "exaggeration" and "performance"; After winning the championship, he took the initiative to find the camera to spread his hands and pout, as if to say that "there is no opponent", and he was said to be "too crazy" and "show". There are also some people who can't get used to her wearing makeup on the field, so they cut out her once dark-skinned appearance and humiliate her appearance and scold her for plastic surgery.
None of this affects her anymore. A few days later, she updated her selfies and training photos, and smiled happily, "I'm just flamboyant, heartless." ”
"If it weren't for this character, I probably wouldn't be where I am today." She laughed at "Chinese Philanthropist". In the face of gossip, she is also very open-minded: "I think everyone is a first-time person, and they are all ordinary people, so there is no need to think too much." When you have the tolerance to allow others to be themselves, you naturally have the courage to be yourself. Athletes don't lack courage on the field, I'm just more willing to share it. Give time and attention to the people who love me, and let the others do whatever they want! ”
On February 18 this year, the appointment ceremony of the Running Angel Fund of the Red Cross Foundation of China was held in Shanghai, and Wu Yanni became the "Angel of Love" of the project. Founded in 2007, the fund aims to provide assistance to children with lower limb deformities from families in need, and has so far provided free consultation, surgery, rehabilitation and other medical assistance to more than 5,000 children in more than 10 provinces and cities. Because of its theme of "freedom, freedom, and fulfilling children's dreams of running", it is in line with track and field, and the project has cooperated with track and field athletes such as Usain Bolt.
On February 18, Wu Yanni was hired as a caring angel of the "Running Angel Fund" of the Red Cross Foundation of China. Photo / provided by the interviewee
Tang Jialong, the project leader, told "Chinese Philanthropist" that the reason why Wu Yanni was chosen as the "Angel of Love" was because he liked her sunny and healthy image of running on the field, and also hoped to use her strength to let more people pay attention to children with lower limb deformities. The project is currently underway in Shandong, and she will be invited to participate in front-line visits in the future.
As a Sichuan girl, Wu Yanni was very close to the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. Zigong could directly feel the aftershocks, the high-voltage power pole at the entrance of her community was broken, and there were many cracks on the wall. Although she did not witness the tragic situation on the front line of the epicenter, the ignorant little Wu Yanni had already felt the helpless atmosphere spreading in the disaster.
"The children of Sichuan, who have experienced the earthquake and disaster relief, now give back to the society in their own way, I think it is something I should do. At that time, I was still young, but now that I am able to help some children, I am very happy. She said.
Doing public welfare is more like following a certain intuition for Wu Yanni. Because she likes small animals, she saw a link to "rescue stray cats and dogs" in the live broadcast room on Douyin, so she paid without thinking. She also paid out of her own pocket to sponsor a poor student in her hometown to go to college. She entrusted her salary card to her mother, Xiong Yan, and made regular payments to the recipients, and the other party continued to communicate with her and express her gratitude in the form of letters.
A thank you letter from a student sponsored by Wu Yanni. Photo / provided by the interviewee
"I'm still learning." Wu Yanni said, "My idea is just that as an ordinary person, I want to do more good deeds and help the weak." As a competitive sports person, he is a little famous, and his image may be healthy and positive, so he should be able to help promote some public welfare. ”
Public welfare will undoubtedly continue to bring more energy to her whole life. And for now, Wu Yanni's mind is mainly on the lavender-purple runway. In the women's 100m hurdles at the Olympic Games, the first-ranked United States player Russell achieved a time of 12.25 seconds, and the threshold for entering the top 10 also reached 12.40 seconds. On the premise of facing up to the gap, Wu Yanni set two goals for herself: one is to hit her personal best; The second is to try to break the national record, 12.64 seconds. To this end, she has been working hard with the team, hard to hone her old and difficult problem - starting skills.
And the bigger dream is that if she can, she will try her best to reach the semi-finals and even the final.
Nothing could stop her from running forward, including injuries, including doubts. In July, she posted a Weibo, "Life is a wilderness, and I am about to run on a bigger stage!" I'll do my best, good luck with me! ”
Author: Gong Yijie
Image source: Visual China
Photo editor: Zhang Xu
Duty Editor: Qiu Yu