In the middle of summer, the lotus flowers in Longtan West Lake in Beijing bloom in a variety of ways, and the pond is full of people walking, fishing, and photography. Across the road is the south gate of the Training Bureau of the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China, and the distance of the street, Zou Jingyuan never had time to see these lotuses. "My goal is to defend my title."
On August 5, local time, the gymnastics event of the Paris Olympics continued to be held at the Bercy Gymnasium, and in the men's parallel bars final, Chinese player Zou Jingyuan impeccablely obtained a high score of 16.2 with a beautiful posture and super high difficulty, defending the "strongest parallel bars on the surface" while also defending the title.
Before leaving for Paris, Zou Jingyuan accepted an exclusive interview with Cover News, telling about his other four years.
Zou Jingyuan gave a thumbs up to the camera
The two years that were "pressed".
The most famous "attraction" of the gymnastics hall of the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China is, of course, the "World Champion Wall", although some of the photos have a sense of age, but the golden background is a symbol of honor. Zou Jingyuan's photo is in the third row of the Champions Wall, with the Olympic rings next to his name, which is a symbol of the Olympic champion. When he first entered the national team 12 years ago, Zou Jingyuan was deeply shocked by this wall, "At that time, I made a wish to become a world champion. Zou Jingyuan realized this wish in five years.
"The fact that he was able to produce results so quickly at that time must have something to do with the foundation he laid when he was a child." When Zou Jingyuan was more than 6 years old, Cao Zhiguo, the coach of the Sichuan gymnastics team, went to the local selection of materials and fell in love with him, "Like him, there are really few dolls who want to practice and their parents support, he is the kind that can endure hardships, and he has to practice while crying." ”
When he was a player, Cao Zhiguo, who had entered the Beijing Sports Team and the national team, also boasted that he was a talented player, "All-round, I think I am a genius, and I am also naughty in the national team." After entering and leaving the national team a few times, Cao Zhiguo returned to the Sichuan team, and after the 2001 National Games, Cao Zhiguo retired and became a coach.
"I am very demanding as a coach, once my feet leave the equipment and leave the ground, the toes and knees must be clamped, and this is also the case when I get on the equipment." Cao Zhiguo said that the sentence he most often said to Zou Jingyuan was: "I don't need you to learn this action at once, but what I ask for is not to learn it plainly, but to reach a very high level." ”
Compression training stimulates the muscles
For a long time in the Sichuan team, Zou Jingyuan's movements and difficulty were far ahead of his peers, but suddenly at a point in time, he found that something was wrong. "When he was 14 years old, he couldn't even win with 12-year-old and 13-year-old players, because he didn't let him practice the difficulty, all the most basic movements, pressed him, didn't let him learn the moves, and let him lay a firmer foundation."
"At that time, it may have pressed him for two years." More than ten years later, Cao Zhiguo still couldn't help laughing, "Yuan Yuan stopped practicing with me later, I remember one day my master (Lei Ming) asked me, 'Why is Yuan Yuan gone', and I said, 'He doesn't want to practice with me'." In the past, those players couldn't beat him, but now all of them are developing difficult, and if he doesn't develop, he is very uncomfortable. Later, my master scolded Yuan Yuan, and he came back, so Zou Jingyuan's foundation was very good. ”
The most memorable day
Just when Zou Jingyuan was "pressed" to the breaking point, he entered the national team. "He came out very quickly, and he started to produce results in two or three years, and as soon as he came out, he won a few gold medals." In the first National Youth Games in 2015, Zou Jingyuan won four gold medals in the all-around, rings, pommel horse, parallel bars and silver medals in free exercise. Feng Zhe, the parallel bars champion at the 2012 London Olympics, once had an evaluation of Zou Jingyuan: "Zou Kai and Feng Zhe are enhanced versions. And it was also at that time that Zou Jingyuan shouted out the goal of becoming an Olympic champion.
In the 2017 Tianjin National Games gymnastics competition, it was Zou Jingyuan's first time participating in the National Games, because of nervousness, there were mistakes in the two individual events of pommel horse and rings on the first day, and he won two fifth places. On the day of the parallel bars final, Cao Zhiguo was so nervous that he ran outside the gymnastics hall and smoked a cigarette. "At that time, I really didn't dare to look at it, it was the first time that I had a team member walk here, and now I am relatively calm."
A month after winning the parallel bars National Games, Zou Jingyuan won the parallel bars event at the World Championships in Montreal and became the world champion.
"Overall, his gymnastics career has been relatively smooth, but there are still lows." The trough in Cao Zhiguo's mouth was the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, because of a mistake, Zou Jingyuan was upset and missed the three consecutive World Championships in the parallel bars event. "It was the first time he had made a mistake in a tournament and he cried sadly when he came back." After the World Championships, Zou Jingyuan's parents went to Beijing, and the three of them sat in a restaurant to eat, "We didn't ask, and he didn't say, but I could feel that he was under a lot of pressure." ”
That defeat made Zou Jingyuan constantly reflect and summarize, "After he got out of training, he was thinking about the movements in his brain, even if it was playing games or other relaxation, he was thinking about the essentials of the movements." ”
In the end, at the Tokyo Olympics, Zou Jingyuan, who was "the strongest parallel bars on the surface", was steady, held his head high two seconds later, completed the finishing action, and won the gold medal in the men's parallel bars. A foreign commentator at the time couldn't help but sigh: "Zou Jingyuan is from an alien planet. Another partner said, "My jaw dropped!" ”
Recalling the "Tokyo moment", Zou Jingyuan said, "This day was the most memorable day of my life. ”
The first kind of love
In the gymnastics hall of the Training Bureau, the parallel bars are very close to the "champion wall", and it can be said that every time Zou Jingyuan vacates on the bar, he can catch a glimpse of the golden wall. The Chinese gymnastics men's team participating in the Paris Olympics, the only two Olympic champions, Zou Jingyuan and Liu Yang, the second time to participate in the Olympic Games, Zou Jingyuan said that the biggest change is the mentality: "I think there should be less unknown feelings, more firmness." ”
Zou Jingyuan played with a shoulder injury
In the past three years, although the results have been stable, the injuries caused by high-intensity training have started to come to the door over time, "Injuries are definitely increasing with the age of the athletes, but our technology is also getting better and better, and the security is getting better and better." I didn't think too much about it, but I did my best in training. Since Zou Jingyuan entered the national team, his head coach at the time, Wang Hongwei, commented, "His muscle strength and physical appearance are first-class." "In the open class of the Chinese gymnastics team, Zou Jingyuan has also been conducting strength training." Playing is training, and then putting what you do in your daily training into the game. Zou Jingyuan said that this is how he feels about the Olympic competition, when the reporter asked, "Are you nervous?" "Of course, it's impossible not to be nervous." "How do you get nervous?" "Just nervous to go to the game."
Concise and action-oriented, this is Zou Jingyuan's personality portrait, if you use the popular MBTI personality test, Zou Jingyuan is a proper "i person" (introverted type). When asked what he wanted to say to himself after the parallel bars competition at the Paris Olympics, Zou Jingyuan's answer was a little richer: "I should not forget my original intention and find the love I had when I first practiced gymnastics." ”
At first, I loved jumping around on the sofa and learning Ultraman to do handstands in bed. When Zou Jingyuan was a child, he loved to go to the trampoline in Yibin People's Park near his home to play.
However, competitive sports can't be so happy forever. "He didn't dare to tell me that he was closed, because he knew that I was going to scold him, and that being closed was a timely thing, but I also understood that there was still more than a month before (the Olympics), so let's just fight, and then slowly adjust after the game." Maybe only Cao Zhiguo knows what Zou Jingyuan has endured behind the defense of the title. "It's a lot of pressure, crying until I cry to the point of video."
On the field, you will never see Zou Jingyuan's fragile side, he will always be the spiritual guy with firm eyes and a "big back", just like he said: "You have to be energetic every day." ”
"Will the Paris Olympics be your end?" Zou Jingyuan, who is 26 and a half years old, thought about it and said, "Let's continue to stay true to our original intention." ”
Source: Cover News