On July 27, 2024 local time, in Tahiti, French Polynesia, in the first round of the women's surfing competition at the Paris Olympics, Chinese player Yang Siqi was in the competition (Photo: ISA, Photo: Tim Mckenna)
Fifteen-year-old Yang Siqi, the youngest swimmer in the Olympic surfing competition, fell over and over again in the waves of Tahiti, and then came out of the water, waiting for the next wave.
At 1 a.m. Beijing time on August 2, Yang Siqi tried again and again to enter the heavy pipe waves of the South Pacific, which she was unfamiliar with, but she was bold. In the broadcast footage, she is repeatedly drowned in the churning white spray. Counting down to 1 minute and 36 seconds, she grabbed the wave and tried to enter the tube, but was overturned by the wave.
Her opponent was ·United States surfer Caroline Marks, fourth in surfing at the Tokyo Olympics and winner of the World Surfing Tour.
Yang Siqi is the son of the mountains and the sea. She was born in Daliang Mountain and saw the sea for the first time when she was 8 years old. Because she was not old enough to compete in judo, she was sent to practice sailing, and because of her courage and good balance, she switched to surfing. She and coach Luo Yang are both halfway monks, paving the way while exploring the road.
What kind of surf makes what kind of surfer, and the winner has to catch the best wave. Before coming to the Paris Olympics, Yang Siqi did not rush the heavy pipe wave, and her Olympic goal is to run the whole pipe wave in the Olympic arena.
Yang lost to Caroline and stopped in the round of 16, but this was the first time that a Chinese athlete had competed in an Olympic surfing competition.
She rushed to the heavy pipe wave, though not completely. But the surfer's career can continue into his thirties or even his forties, and Yang Siqi's ocean journey has only just begun.
race
On a small island in the South Pacific 15,000 kilometres from Paris, Tahiti — better known as Tahiti — is the site of surfing competitions at 13-second intervals. At 11:48 local time on July 27, as soon as the order sounded, Yang Siqi leaned over and jumped into the sea with a surfboard, and quickly slid his hands to swim to the waiting wave area, leaving only a vague smile for the camera on the boat.
Few surfers can laugh when they first venture into the water. Tahiti is known for its "heavy tube waves", which are one of the most dangerous waves in the world. The current crashes from the bottom of the ocean to the continental shelf, whipping up towering, impactful tubular waves that crash down at breakdown. Surfers need to get deep into the tube and get out before it breaks. The shallow reef close to the surface means that surfers can fall onto sharp coral reefs at any time, and in fact people actually die there. Even Tokyo Olympic surfing gold medalist Carissa Moore felt a strong fear ·when she first went surfing in Tahiti, "like being thrown into deep water when she couldn't swim." ”
On July 23, 2024 local time, in Tahiti, French Polynesia, Yang Siqi during pre-competition training (Photo: ISA, Photo: Pablo Jimenez)
In the broadcast footage in the distance, Yang Siqi is like a duckweed, rising and falling with the waves. In 2 minutes and 34 seconds, Yang Siqi took the lead in grabbing the first wave and was knocked down by the wave. Then she tried three more times, took off, slid and was swept into the waves. The third time, she was photographed by the waves in the distant lagoon, and the crew had to take her back in a jet ski. As soon as the dinghy stopped, she immediately dived into the water again, looking around to lock on to her target.
“绝对的战士”（absolute warrior），在澳大利亚媒体的转播中，解说员赞叹杨思琪“一以贯之的坚决”（commitment all the time）。
The surfing competition is a group competition in which teams of two to three compete on the same stage within the stipulated 30 minutes. Several judges scored the contestants' movements on the waves, with a perfect score of 10, and finally added the best two waves to get the total score of the contestants. In the first round of preliminaries, Yang Siqi ranked third in the group with 5.40 points and failed to directly advance to the third round.
The repechage wave on the second day was a little weaker, and Yang Siqi returned to what she was good at. She still caught the first wave, plunged into the bottom of the wave, and then jerked high to break the crest. In the end, Yang Siqi defeated Peru's Aguirre with 8.76 points to enter the third round of 16. After that, the race was postponed for three days due to bad weather. At 7 a.m. local time on August 1, Tahiti was cloudy and breezy and even rainbow, and in the turbulent waves, Yang Siqi lost to Caroline's 6.93 with 1.63 points.
On July 28, 2024 local time, in Tahiti, French Polynesia, Chinese player Yang Siqi defeated Peru's Aguirre in the second round of women's surfing at the Paris Olympics and advanced to the round of 16 (Photo: Visual China)
From the mountains to the sea
Yang Siqi was born in Huili City, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, a small city sandwiched between the Hengduan Mountains. Her mother, Chen Chaoju, recalled that she was lively and active when she was a child, and liked basketball and taekwondo. At first, she was selected to study judo at the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture Amateur Sports School, and later entered the Qionghai Water Sports School because she was not old enough to participate in the competition.
Young Yang Siqi (Photo: Yang Siqi's personal social platform account)
In Liangshan, Yang Siqi's earliest training base was by Qionghai, but Qionghai is not a sea, just a 30-square-kilometer freshwater lake in Xichang, the capital of Liangshan.
In 2017, Yang Siqi practiced OP sailing at Qionghai Academy, and coach Luo Yang valued her balance and explosiveness and suggested that she switch to surfing. After learning to surf, eight-and-a-half-year-old Yang Siqi saw the sea for the first time in Hainan.
In 2019, Yang Siqi, who had just switched from sailing to surfing, entered the national team for training. This year, the Chinese surfing team missed the 20 quota places for men and women in the Tokyo Olympics, and our best results at the World Surfing Games were 65th for women and 64th for men.
Yang quickly showed her surfing talent. In the 2020 National Surfing Championship, Yang Siqi won the women's short board championship in the U15 and U18 categories. At the 2022 National Surfing Championships, she won three women's short board championships in the open group, U15 group, and U18 group.
However, on the international stage, Yang Siqi at this time is still some distance away from the Olympics. She competed at the World Surfing Games in 2022 and 2023, finishing 29th and 31st respectively, both of which were not good enough to qualify for the Paris Olympics.
A month after the Olympic defeat, Yang Siqi appeared at the World Youth Championships and won the gold medal in the relay race with her teammates. She smoothly paddled four movements on a wave, and the sense of power that opened and closed caused the event commentator to exclaim, "Incredible." Yang Siqi couldn't help but raise her hands and wave them at the shore, perhaps cheering for the referee, or reminding her teammates to hand over the baton, and then drowned in the white spray that collapsed behind her. This wave received a score of 9.83, which is close to a perfect score.
The 2024 World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico is the last chance to qualify for the Paris Olympics. Yang defeated two-time World Surfing League Tour champion Australia veteran Tyler ·Wright in the second round. By the sixth round of the repechage, she had topped the four, beating Brisa Hennessy, who had finished third in the tournament ·.
At the end of the sixth round, the staff stopped Yang Siqi and informed her that she had qualified for the Paris Olympics. When the host said "the next Olympian – Siqi Yang from China", she felt herself "tremble all over."
courage
The wave conditions at the training site are a huge constraint, and there is no wave point as large as Tahiti in the country. Even abroad, Yang Siqi has not been able to get similar training conditions for heavy pipe waves. In addition, arriving at the arena only two weeks early left Yang Siqi with too little time to adapt.
It is difficult to make up for the shortcomings, but it is not easy to get to this point. Coach Luo Yang said in a pre-match interview that for this competition, "our main goal is to accumulate Olympic experience, learn from experts, pay attention to the enjoyment process, and ensure a smooth and safe finish." ”
The desire to rush the heavy pipe waves, or the excitement, made Yang Siqi quite conspicuous in the pre-game warm-up, and almost everyone noticed her. Foreign media described her as follows: "Yang Siqi fell again and again", "She received several heavy blows in training, but that didn't stop her", "She was almost fearless. On the other side, "technicians and photographers gathered to cheer her on the fairway," while the lifeguard smiled and said, "She kept us busy." ”
On July 25, 2024 local time, in Tahiti, French Polynesia, Yang Siqi trains and prepares for the game (Photo: Visual China)
United States male surf·er John Florence was also amazed by her hard work and courage: "The waves here are terrifying, and it's incredible to see her [Yang Siqi] surfing here and pushing her limits." ”
Seeing that Yang Siqi was not only training endlessly, repeatedly falling and being frustrated, but even coaches from other teams came to remind Luo Yang and told her to "stop because she might get hurt".
"Bold", this is the evaluation that Luo Yang said the most when he mentioned Yang Siqi. When she first learned to sail, she hadn't even learned how to swim before she suddenly felt panicked and scared when she fell into the water.
In Tahiti, surfers instinctively fear heavy tubes, describing them as like falling into a wide, dark tunnel, leaving only themselves to rub against everything around them, "wonderful and intimidating." Not to mention the risk of sliding off a surfboard and getting injured by a reef, making competitors hesitate to get up and down the waves, like "sending yourself to the edge of a cliff". In an interview after the second round of the competition, Yang Siqi received a short and interesting evaluation of the heavy pipe wave surfing experience: "It's easy to get in, but it's hard to get out!" ”
Yang Siqi will not be struck down by fear, nor is she bound by labels, rankings and expectations. When the reporter asked about the harvest of six years of surfing, she just answered briefly, knowing a lot of masters and some friends on the podium. She enjoyed "being swept in the middle of the waves, from the white expanse around her to the feeling of rushing out of the waves", so she fell again and again, and got out of the water again and again, waiting for the opportunity to catch the next wave.
(参考资料来源:新华社,凉山日报,新华体育,中国青年网、surfline.com,dukesurf.com,hardcore.com)
Chen Shiyu, intern reporter of Southern People Weekly, and Yang Nan, reporter of Southern People Weekly