Out of 10 world champions Why is Qitaihe?
During the Beijing Winter Olympics, Qitaihe City in Heilongjiang Province became the focus of attention.
More than 40 years ago, a coach named Meng Qingyu started skating here.
After the efforts of several generations, this small town of less than 700,000 people has 4 Winter Olympic champions, 3 Special Olympics champions, 10 world champions, Yang Yang, Wang Meng, Sun Linlin and Fan Kexin, breaking world records 16 times. , won 7 Winter Olympic gold medals and 177 world-class gold medals, known as China's "Hometown of Winter Olympic Champions".
Now, walking on Qitaihe Street and asking any citizen, they have all heard that Wang Meng is the daughter of a miner, Fan Kexin's home is a shoe repairer, and there is a Yangyang Street not far from the city center... 2019" The completion of the "Short Track Speed Skating Championship Hall" has made these athletes truly become the landmarks of their hometowns.
The transformation of a small town
Qitaihe City is located in the northeastern border of China, at the western end of the Wanda Mountains. The Waken River and the Naoli River meander through. The temperature is below minus 20°C for 4 months a year, which provides a unique opportunity to carry out various ice sports. climatic and geographical conditions.
"Go to the Woken River and see why Qitai River has won the championship. The river is full of skating." A netizen said.
In the snow-covered winter, children from four to five years old, and elderly people in their sixties and seventies, will walk on the ice and in the snow to enjoy the happiness brought by ice and snow sports.
The local people's love for ice and snow sports has become a living habit and way of life.
Indeed, after 4 p.m. in mid-February, the temperature had dropped to -20°C, but in the Taoshan Lake Ice and Snow Park north of the city, many parents still took their children to play on snow slides, off-road vehicles pulling snow rings, and snowmobiles. , horse riding, etc.
At the intersection of Shanhu Road and Yanhe Street next to Taoshan Lake Ice and Snow Park, the "Short Track Speed Skating Champion Pavilion" stands tall.
Completed in 2011, the museum has just begun to be built as an urban sightseeing tower.
In order to welcome the 2022 Winter Olympics and expand the advantages of the Qitaihe short track speed skating project, the Qitaihe Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government built the sightseeing tower into a short track speed skating champion hall as a whole, and the renovation was completed and opened to the public in 2019.
The whole tower has 8 floors. The second floor is a display of images of Meng Qingyu and coaches of the past dynasties. The third to fifth floors are the exhibition halls of Yang Yang, Wang Meng and Zhang Jie.
Before the birth of the Winter Olympics champion, Qitaihe was an industrial city that was born and prospered by coal: with the discovery of the Boli coalfield in 1910, Qitaihe arose from coal mining; after the founding of New China, the government began to The mining of Qitaihe coal field has brought continuous vitality to this remote town; in 1983, Qitaihe was promoted to a provincial municipality, and together with Jixi, Shuangyashan and Hegang, it was called "the four major coal cities in Heilongjiang".
According to the official website of Qitaihe government, in recent years, Qitaihe has continued to promote the development of "six major industries" such as coal intensive processing, new materials and new energy, biology and medicine, and advanced manufacturing, and has accelerated the transformation and revitalization of the city.
With the continuous emergence of world champions, ice and snow tourism has also become one of the options for the transformation and development of Qitaihe.
A new Winter Olympic champion
After Wang Meng retired, Fan Kexin became the leader of Qitaihe short track speed skating.
On February 5th, Fan Kexin and Qu Chunyu, Wu Dajing, Ren Ziwei and Zhang Yuting won the gold medal in the short track speed skating mixed team relay final held at the Capital Gymnasium; on the evening of February 13th, Fan Kexin and his teammates Han Yutong and Qu Chun Yu, Zhang Chutong and Zhang Yuting won the bronze medal in the women's 3000m short track speed skating relay.
Before becoming famous, Fan Kexin's parents opened a shoe repair shop in the urban area of Qitaihe.
When he first started training, due to his poor family background, Fan Kexin could not even afford a pair of skates costing 2,500 yuan.
Today, Fan Kexin's parents have moved into the brand new "Champion Building" a few years ago.
According to Ms. Lu, Fan Kexin's neighbor, "Fan Kexin's parents have grown old in the past two years and stopped repairing shoes. They were picked up during the Beijing Winter Olympics."
On the evening of February 13, Fan Kexin and his teammates competed in the women's 3000m short track speed skating final.
After watching the game, Fan Kexin's older brother Fan Enyu told reporters: "I am very proud of her as a brother."
Fan Enyu said that Fan Kexin tried his best not to let his family watch it when he was training before, because that kind of scene seemed too hard.
A founder of short track speed skating
The achievements of Qitaihe short track speed skating project are inseparable from Meng Qingyu.
In his 33-year coaching career, he has trained dozens of Winter Olympic champions and world champions.
Ms. Han Pingyun, Meng Qingyu's widow, introduced that Fan Kexin's family was not good when she was a child, and she was malnourished since she was a child. After joining the team, Ms. Meng took great care of her.
"At that time, many teachers said that she was not physically fit and asked her to retire, but Ms. Meng insisted that she stay and improve her nutrition and conditioning her body."
Meng Qingyu was born in Harbin in 1951. In 1969, he came to work as a coal miner in the newly built mine in Qitaihe with the educated youth "Going to the Mountains and Going to the Countryside".
At that time, he used his spare time to practice skating, and he also won the skating championship in the Hejiang area on behalf of Qitaihe.
Because Meng Qingyu is not good at words and only works hard, his co-workers nicknamed him "Mangzi".
On August 2, 2006, Meng Qingyu and his team drove from Qitaihe to Harbin. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident at the age of 56.
In 1974, Meng Qingyu was admitted to Qitaihe Sports School and became a skating coach.
He pondered on ice skates and skates when he had nothing to do, and even brought the full-length mirrors given by relatives and friends when he got married to correct the posture of the team members.
At that time, Meng Qingyu often led his team members to go skating on the Waken River in the wild, sweeping the ice until eight or nine o'clock every night, and then getting up at one or two o'clock in the morning to water.
At that time, Meng Qingyu welded a large iron bucket, punched a lot of holes under it, and put a large rag behind it. After the water ran down, the ice surface would be smoother.
Sometimes when Meng Qingyu came home in the early morning, Han Pingyun saw that he was covered in ice flowers and didn't understand what was going on.
Later I learned that the water in the iron bucket was frozen at -30 ℃ at night in the northeast, and I had to stir it with a stick, and the water splashed on my body and it would freeze immediately.
Meng Qingyu later took the key class members to Harbin to practice skating, and the scheduled class time was often in the early morning or midnight, because during the daytime, the venue had to train professional players of the provincial team.
Fan Kexin was one of them.
Han Pingyun remembered that there was a year off for the Chinese New Year, and the other teams left, making Meng Qingyu very happy, "because the entire ice rink is his, and he skated from morning to night."
"I'm still thinking about this year's Winter Olympics, if Mr. Meng was still there, Fan Kexin would not be alone, but batches of champions would have been born. Now Qitaihe directly trains short track speed skaters for the country, no need to go through The provincial team is really proud." Han Pingyun said.
A pair of coaches working to develop champions
On February 16, 2002, Qitaihe athlete Yang Yang won the women's 500m short track speed skating championship at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the United States, achieving a "zero breakthrough" in the gold medal of Chinese athletes in the Winter Olympics.
Yang Yang's enlightenment coach Dong Yanhai is now back in Qitaihe as the head coach of the short track speed skating school. He and his wife Zhang Jie are both students of Meng Qingyu.
Dong Yanhai introduced that Yang Yang was the first group of children he brought.
"At that time (in the late 1970s), there was no indoor skating rink, and they were all skating in the open field. The Waken River and Taoshan Reservoir have been there. The field was very cold, and the ice surface was uneven. Qitaihe athletes inherited that miners are not afraid to endure hardship, The spirit of anti-fatigue and the courage to fight against nature. He still remembers the scene of pouring ice on the outdoor training ground with Meng Qingyu when he was a child. "Sometimes when I go to school during the day, I have to get up at three in the morning and pull a big iron bucket to water it for a while. When the water in the bucket freezes, it needs to be stirred with a rake. The cold water splashes on the body and becomes ice cubes. When I was a child, my hands and face were frozen.
"
Dong Yanhai's wife Zhang Jie is currently the head coach of the short track speed skating training center of Qitaihe Vocational College.
Zhang Jie won the women's 1000m short track speed skating championship at the Universiade in 1991 and 1993 and the 1993 World Championships short track speed skating women's 3000m relay champion. He is the first short track speed skating world champion in Qitaihe City. recipient.
Now, there are often elementary students coming to Qilihe from all directions.
Li Guofeng, the coach of the key class of the amateur short track speed skating school in Qitaihe City, said that one-third of the children who come to skate are from poor families, and the only cost for the students when they come is to buy a skate.
A set of sports education integration model
Skating has become a part of Qitaihe local culture, and the continuous emergence of high-level athletes is not unrelated to the integration model of sports and education implemented in Qitaihe City.
In terms of talent training mode, Qitaihe City has established a short track speed skating characteristic school, a basic class of children's short track speed skating amateur sports school - a key class of children's short track speed skating amateur sports school - a short track speed skating youth team of Heilongjiang Province. The echelon training model has formed a training, delivery and selection mechanism from school to professional team, from amateur to professional.
Since last year, through the establishment of the "provincial team and city-run" base, the youth short track speed skating team of Heilongjiang has landed in Qitaihe, and the short track speed skating training here has been upgraded from a prefecture-level semi-professional team to a provincial-level professional training team. Opened a channel to directly push outstanding athletes to the national team, and opened the door to the international arena.
According to statistics, Qitaihe City currently has more than 500 athletes in training and more than 20 coaches. In six major sports such as speed skating, ski jumping, and snowboarding, more than 300 outstanding athletes have been sent to the country and the province. , the number of registered athletes in the national short track speed skating event has reached more than 1,300, and it is the city with the most abundant reserve talents for short track speed skating in the country.
"The city's primary and secondary school physical education has listed the ice and snow project as a compulsory course, and strive to make a big base for the ice and snow talent 'pyramid'." said Lv Guodong, deputy director of the Qitaihe Education Bureau.
Since 2014, Qitaihe City has included skating in the senior high school entrance examination. Out of the total score of 80 in physical education, skating accounts for 40 points.
This has also made skating more valued by teachers, students and parents, and more and more students have taken to the ice rink.
Chengdu Commercial Daily-Red Star News reporter Lu Yanfei sent from Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang and some comprehensive from Xinhua News Agency