After the last final of the fifth day, the 110-meter hurdles final, the Doha World Championships has officially passed the halfway point.
In the next 5 days of competition, the players led by Su Bai need to focus on the two events: the mixed 4x400m for men and women and the men's 4x400m.
Simultaneously with these two competitions, there was also Wang Shen's high jump qualifying and finals.
On October 2nd, having just experienced the men's 400m final and 110m hurdles final the day before, domestic track and field fans and passers-by were still immersed in the carnival of the previous day. There were no particularly important events on the 2nd, so the events of this day rarely received much attention.
Although the schedule is not receiving much attention, the event is still progressing normally.
On the evening of October 2, the men's high jump qualifying round was first launched. Among the two groups of 32 players in total, Wang Shen easily jumped over a height of 2.29 meters and ranked first in the qualifying group with a 100% one-time clearance, and successfully advanced to the high jump final on the evening of the 4th.
However, the preliminaries of the mixed men's and women's 4x400m were not as easy as track and field fans had originally thought.
The mixed 4x400m event is a new and unfamiliar event for the 400m teams and athletes of various countries. It can be said that all the mixed 4x400m teams participating in this World Championships were formed after the IAAF and the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee announced that this event will be included in the Olympics and World Championships as an official event for the first time.
The World Athletics Relays in May can be seen as a rehearsal for the mixed men's and women's 4x400m event before the two top competitions of the World Championships and the Olympics.
In that relay race, the Chinese team's performance was outstanding. Although they only took sixth place in the final due to problems with the players' physical fitness, they had won first place in the group preliminaries at that time.
At that time, the Chinese mixed 4x400m relay team won first place in the group preliminaries with a time of 3 minutes 16.63 seconds. However, in the mixed 4x400m preliminaries of this World Championships, the Chinese team ran 3 minutes 16.02 seconds. After breaking the national record for the mixed 4x400m, the Chinese team faced the danger of not being able to advance for the first time.
In the first group of the mixed men's and women's 4x400m preliminaries, the Chinese team's result only ranked fifth in the group, while the top four teams in the group had scores of 3 minutes 12.40, 3 minutes 12.67, 3 minutes 12.69 and 3 minutes 12.77 respectively.
The Chinese team's result of 3 minutes 16.02 seconds had an almost incredible gap of 4 seconds from the four teams ahead. When Qiu Wen was sprinting the last leg, at the moment he took over the baton, there was already an insurmountable gap between him and the players of the four teams ahead.
In the live broadcast room of the sports channel, when Shao Minyi and Li Sen saw Qiu Wen take over the last baton and sprint, they already understood the final result, and both of them had indescribable sighs on their faces.
"It took less than five months from the World Athletics Relays to the World Championships, but the top teams such as the United States, Jamaica, Bahrain and the United Kingdom have completed a qualitative transformation in the training and integration of the men's and women's mixed 4x400m team."
"The common problem of the American team in baton handover was still seen in today's game, but they covered up the little flaws perfectly with their own strong strength. Teams like Jamaica, Bahrain and the United Kingdom have done the most perfect integration training for the team, and they are not inferior to the American team."
"In comparison, the Chinese team has made some progress in the 4x400m event, but the degree of improvement is not obvious enough."
In the live broadcast, Shao Minyi and Li Sen were inspired by the first group of the mixed 4x400m preliminaries in front of them, but in the audience, Jiang Wentao, Pei Jinan and Su Bai were not as disappointed as Shao Minyi and Li Sen.
In other words, Jiang Wentao and Pei Jinan did show disappointment on their faces, but the situation before them seemed to be within their expectations.
Compared with the United States and Jamaica, which are already strong sprint powerhouses, the Chinese team has never had an advantage in the 400-meter race.
What the Chinese team can do is to achieve the 'best speed that the Chinese team can achieve' by relying on the smooth and skillful cooperation of the players and the best possible speed.
In today's mixed 4x400m preliminaries, the Chinese team has already sent out its best lineup without any negligence. However, even Zhang Ziyi, the strongest player among them, only ran 400 meters in 44.81 seconds, which is an unbridgeable gap with the core players of these top teams.
The 4x400m mixed relay team consisting of Zhang Ziyi, Qiu Wen, Chen Yada and Lin Yao was able to improve the team record from the original 3 minutes 16.14 seconds to 3 minutes 16.02 seconds in today's competition, which was already an outstanding performance.
Before this competition, Su Bai had privately warned Pei Jinan about the situations that might be encountered in this World Championships. Not only teams like the United States and Jamaica, but also teams like Poland, Brazil and India, with the basic qualities of their original 400-meter individual athletes, are likely to achieve a qualitative leap in performance within these five months.
Tonight's preliminary match also confirmed the warning Su Bai gave them before the game.
The Chinese team's 400-meter sprint is certainly improving, and the improvement is huge. However, compared with these existing strong teams or world-class teams, the Chinese team's 400-meter sprint still has significant shortcomings.
Today's game also woke up the track and field fans who had been immersed in the joyful atmosphere of "the Chinese team is awesome" in recent days.
The Chinese team's 400m event will become stronger step by step in the future, but the current Chinese team's 400m sprint event is not the kind of team that can "make it to the finals as soon as it is said."
When the events and results of the second group of mixed men's and women's 4x400m preliminaries were released, the time of 3 minutes 15.96 for the fourth place in the second group of preliminaries completely announced that the Chinese team had no hope of advancing to the finals.
This was the first time that the Chinese 400-meter sprint team failed to advance from the preliminaries in this World Championships.
[Warning: China's national track and field team suffered its first setback in the 400m event at the World Championships - we are still some distance away from being strong! 】
That night, after the official list of participants for the mixed 4x400m final was announced, the Sports Daily was the first to publish this report, which first affirmed the performance of the Chinese mixed 4x400m team.
After all, this team broke the national record in the preliminaries, and this achievement is worthy of praise in the first place. After the praise, the reporter from the sports newspaper accurately revealed many problems in the Chinese team's 400-meter relay event from a sharp perspective.
This discussion is not limited to the mixed 4x400m relay team, but has also been extended to the men's 4x400m relay team and the women's 4x400m relay team.
The entire article discussed various issues including the insufficient strength of the reserve team, the inability of the female team players to adapt to the world's top competition, the adaptability of Qiu Wen and Li Junhao in the relay event, the uncertainty of the future core of the men's team, the large gap in average strength between the men's and women's teams, etc.
The article not only mentioned the mixed 4x400m preliminaries of this event, but also mentioned the men's 4x400m preliminaries on October 5. Can the Chinese men's 4x400m relay team advance to the finals?
At the same time, the reporter extended the question to next year's Tokyo Olympics.
——[Today's defeat in the mixed 4x400m preliminaries is undoubtedly a wake-up call for the 400m event, which has been so popular over the past year and never seems to disappoint track and field fans.
This thunderous failure tells us that the Chinese team is still some distance away from being truly strong in the 400m event.
This is due to the actual gap caused by various reasons, as well as the psychological sense of error that track and field fans have developed due to the success of the event over the past year.
But it is gratifying that this defeat did not come too late. It is enough to alert us, and for us, this lesson is not too heavy.
With this lesson, we can see more clearly the gap between us and the world-class teams, and then continue to work hard to make up for the gap. 】
This report was quickly moved to the track and field kingdom and Weibo, which seemed to be a little noisy after the defeat in the preliminary round.
After the mixed 4x400m preliminary failure, although most of the voices on the Internet were understandable, there are always some people who may not really care about track and field events, but after seeing the "preliminary failure", no matter the reason, they will start to criticize the contestants.
[You performed very well in the individual events, so how come you can’t even win the preliminaries in the team events? 】
[Didn’t you get first place in the preliminaries of the World Athletics Relay Championships? I don’t want you to take first place today, but can’t you advance directly from the top three? Not even a replacement for promotion? 】
[I think the 400-meter event is over-hyped? They have been the hot search topic every day these days, but they are useless when it comes to the competition. It is better for athletes to train and compete hard. There is no point in doing all those fancy things. 】
Of course, track and field fans and passers-by who are familiar with the situation will not really think that what these people say makes sense, but there are always some passers-by who are not familiar with the situation and will be affected. These people are probably nitpicking people, and they can make people feel sick and have a headache when they talk about them, making track and field fans feel for the first time that there are some not-so-good aspects of a sport that becomes too famous.
Fortunately, the release of this article has also curbed the so-called "divergence of justice" of some people.
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