The 17-year-old Li Zetai is from Harbin and was born into a curling family. He has been practicing curling since he was a child, but his clear growth line makes his persistence full of "love" and "initiative". 16-year-old Chen Zaoxue is from Shanghai. She benefited from the "Northern Ice and South Exhibition" to participate in curling, but she led her father to take the curling referee certificate. Completely different growth curves intersected at the Gangwon Winter Youth Olympics. They and two other post-2005 teenagers finished fourth, creating the best performance in the history of the Chinese team in the mixed team curling event at the Winter Youth Olympics.
In the bronze medal match with the Swiss team, the Chinese team fell behind 5:8 in the 8th inning. The audience was worried, but Li Zetai regarded this scene as "actual training". He recalled to reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily, "It just happened. Two days ago, we talked about how to get 3 points with the two backhand positions. Now that the game has reached this situation, we will use the 'last game' to improve ourselves." His stable mentality allowed him to seize his opponent's mistakes and score 3 points to tie the game. The game entered the extra round, and Li Zetian admitted that he was "a little too strong." After losing the advantage of the backhand, the Chinese team won fourth place.
He remains calm when faced with difficult situations and does not suffer internal friction when faced with mistakes. Li Zetai's "stability" has a kind of "youthful" maturity. "In competitive sports, mistakes are inevitable, and adult teams will also make mistakes when participating in world-class competitions. Besides, we It is a youth team, and the coach said that a success rate of 60 to 70 percent is normal. The key is to find problems, change yourself, and strive to reduce the error rate in future games."
Li Zetai has been familiar with the rapid changes in the arena since he was a child. His father, Li Hongchen, served as the head coach of the Chinese National Curling Team and the Chinese National Youth Team. He appeared on TV more than at home. While Li Zetai shouted cheers through the screen, he asked in his heart: "Why does my dad always So busy?" It wasn't until he was 11 or 12 years old that he began to receive professional training and transformed from a spectator to an athlete. He gradually understood the reasons for the persistence of his father's athletes and began to understand the trade-offs behind "bringing glory to the country." But when his father appeared as a coach, Li Zetai always felt that "he seemed to be more strict with me." Then he thought about it. He was the captain and was in such a decisive position as fourth base. "Both the overall situation and the success rate are crucial. Strictness It’s for my own good.”
"Every time I skate over, I see his pensive look, which is completely different from that off the court." Chen Zaoxue discovered that Li Zetai, the "social expert" who changed his badges the most off the court, rarely showed a smile when he was on the court. As a " "i person" (introvert - reporter's note) himself became the third base because of his laughter and optimistic personality, acting as the "glue" of the team. "During the game, the third base can run back and forth, and the fourth base has to follow. The bridge of communication between first and second base needs to enliven the atmosphere and improve morale." Therefore, when teammates make mistakes, the youngest Chen Zaoxue is always the first to give comfort and encouragement. She always says: "The next one will be better. "
But as the only southerner in the team, Chen Zaoxue, who has only practiced curling for two and a half years, also has his own pressure to face. "The Winter Youth Olympics is the highest level event I have ever participated in. I am quite nervous and my mentality is not calm." In fact, third base not only has to maintain the morale of the team, but also has to make choices and handle key balls based on the situation on the ice at that time. Therefore, the pressure should not be underestimated. During the game, once he discovered that Chen Zaoxue "didn't know how to take action", Li Zetai would take the initiative to help his teammates ease their emotions. This kind of team cohesion convinced Chen Zaoxue that she "fell in love with curling" after the Winter Youth Olympics. "This kind of tacit teamwork made me feel like home."
Chen Zaoxue came into contact with curling, thanks to the foreshadowing laid by the "Northern Ice-South Exhibition". Since 2012, a curling team has been established in Jing'an District, Shanghai. During the recruitment and selection of new players in 2021, Chen Zaoxue was recommended by a teacher from the No. 71 Middle School Affiliated to Tongji University to participate in the training of the district curling team. While exploring his interest, he also showed his talent With great potential, she not only achieved great results in Shanghai city competitions, but also represented the Shanghai team in the "2022-2023 China Curling League" and was the youngest player in the event.
"My dad is an avid fan of sports, but before he came into contact with curling, he preferred football. Since I started curling, he has been particularly supportive and accompanied me in training and competitions." Chen Zaoxue needs to train 6 days a week, and at the same time he has to Ensure the study of cultural courses. Since the training club is located in the suburbs of Shanghai, she has to spend two hours rushing to the ice rink for training after 4 p.m. every day. After training in the evening, she has to go home to do her homework. But curling’s double test of mental and physical strength, as well as its tolerance for age, gender, and body shape, all attracted Chen Zaoxue. In order to better accompany his daughter, her father also took the curling coaching certificate and referee certificate. "But I know better. My dad often comes to ask me when he encounters problems. Curling gives us more common topics."
Curling has always been a common topic between Li Zetai and his father. What he needs is to erase the filter his father brought to curling and explore his relationship with this "strange yet familiar" project.
In the curling competition of the Second National Youth Games, Li Zetai won the championship of Group B. "I was really proud at that moment." Although he was young at the time, he was very competitive, so that when he came into contact with more powerful players later There was a psychological gap. "When we compete with brothers who are older than us, we lose more and win less, and it's rare that we even compete closely." Later, he continued to work with his teammates in the Tianjin team, checking for leaks and filling in vacancies, and gradually he was able to add suspense to the game based on his strength. "You score one point and I score one, and the winner will be determined in the end."
The mentality of "continuous learning" was brought to the 14th National Winter Games. At the beginning, the whole team did not set a ranking goal, but step by step from the group stage to the final, "the determination to win was slowly cultivated", and finally Tianjin The team won the men's youth curling championship in this tournament. Li Zetan said: "Love is composed bit by bit on the road of growth."
"Whether it is the older generation of athletes who are willing to let their children engage in this project, or the children in the south who are exposed to this project through various channels and insist on practicing it, they all prove the charm of curling from different angles. After all, there are many young people nowadays. Other options." As the captain of China's first-generation women's curling team, the famous player Wang Bingyu told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that behind this "different paths to the same destination" is a reflection of the more diversified training model of reserve talents. "New students Contemporary athletes demonstrate new changes in sports."
“Back then, there were basically no curling venues in China, and people didn’t know much about what kind of sport it was.” In Wang Bingyu’s view, in comparison, training conditions and project awareness are no longer challenges faced by the new generation of athletes, but How to deal with the relationship between themselves and the project and how to face competition will be issues they cannot avoid. "They can be exposed to curling earlier, and they must also allocate their time for school and training to find the motivation to persist. At the same time, We also have to face rivals that are constantly emerging, and domestic competition is obviously more intense now."
Wang Bingyu took the "Fourteenth Winter" as an example and said, "Now the age classification is more accurate, there are more and more participating teams, and even many provincial (autonomous and municipal) teams train local players, which is positive for the development of the project." Role." In her view, the first generation of curling players completed the project's mission of "making something from scratch", while the second generation of curling players represented by Ma Xiuyue and others need to make breakthroughs as much as possible on the existing results, and The young players who are in the growth stage can easily go into battle. "They have not yet taken on too much pressure to play for the national team. I hope they can train themselves through more games and be able to take over the baton of the second generation players in the future. After all, there will be more players in the future." There’s a lot of history for them to make.”
This newspaper, Beijing, February 5th
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Liang Xuan Source: China Youth Daily
Version 08, February 6, 2024