After this 'practice match' revealed its true colors, the athletes who were called up for training and had a few days of relaxation suddenly realized that everything was not that simple.
I told you, where can you find such an angelic coach who can lead his athletes to achieve such rapid improvement in performance?
Li Junhao, who was training as a member of the relay team, looked a little unhappy: "Coach, there's no need to be like this, right? Isn't this practice match a bit too much?"
After hearing this question, Su Bai looked at Li Junhao with a smile: "What's too much?"
Yes, what's too much?
After hearing this question, the other athletes present were also stunned - as a practice match, it is common to find stronger opponents to compete against. This can allow athletes to experience the feeling of competing with high-level athletes, which is conducive to athletes adapting to high-level competition in advance and avoiding situations such as losing their composure when encountering strong enemies.
For example, before some domestic athletes with potential participate in important international competitions, the Athletics Administration Center will try to arrange for them to participate in some low-level international competitions in advance to enrich their experience in international competitions.
To be honest, the opponents arranged by the national team for them are very likely opponents that they are completely unable to face at their level. It is actually a good opportunity for them to compete against these opponents now.
But……
Except for Qiu Wen, the expressions on the faces of the remaining athletes were not very natural.
After Li Junhao was choked by Su Bai's question, his face was not looking good. He thought for a moment and said, "If we practice with players whose level is so different, and the results are too bad, coach, aren't you afraid that our competitive mentality will collapse?"
The collapse of competitive state is indeed a problem that many coaches will worry about, including Su Bai. The reason why he made this decision is actually because the mentality of most athletes in the 400-meter event has reached a level worse than collapse.
Su Bai did not directly answer Li Junhao's question, but asked back: "Before the competition even started, you knew that you would lose your mind in a practice match with an American 400m athlete?"
Li Junhao was frozen in place by Su Bai's question: "No..."
"Why is that?"
"Because you know that you are too weak to compete with the American 400m athletes, even if they are only ranked 50th to 100th in the world?"
"Because you know you are too weak, so you are afraid of losing badly to the American players?"
"You all know that you are too weak, so you don't want to fight against strong opponents and don't want to face the truth that you are too weak?"
Su Bai bombarded him with a series of questions, but his face remained calm. However, every question he asked made Li Junhao and even the remaining 400-meter athletes look uglier.
Su Bai, the coach who seemed gentle, easy to talk to, and even had good cooking skills, completely shed his gentle skin in the face of all this. The fangs he revealed were more ferocious than any coaches these players in the training camp had encountered before.
The previous coaches of these players were also very strict and they also had the habit of scolding the players at any time. However, none of these coaches was as ruthless as Su Bai. They directly found American players, put them on the same field with the American players, called in a group of spectators, and finally told them that these American players were only ranked 50-100th in the world, not the top group in the event, and because of the time difference... their condition was not very good.
What this means is, if you can't even beat these American players who are not in good shape, what level are you at?
Just like the problems that Su Bai had directly exposed in front of Pei Jinan before, these contestants knew in their hearts what level they were at, but they were "content with what they had", immersed in the relaxed environment in the country, and unwilling to face reality.
In that case, Su Bai would smash open their greenhouse with his own hands and let them see what a cruel world the real environment is.
Li Junhao's face became more and more ugly under Su Bai's series of questions. Finally, he said angrily, "Let's compete. Who the hell is worse than those guys?" and then turned and walked away.
The atmosphere at the scene froze for a moment, but Su Bai remained very calm. He smiled and looked at Zhang Ziyi and others present, saying, "I believe you also hope to achieve a good result. Have a good rest tonight and don't over-consume your energy. Tomorrow's practice match will be scheduled in the afternoon. Come on, everyone."
After saying that, Su Bai did not stay in the training ground, but turned around and left first, preparing to go back to the office to review all the training plans for these players and make some corresponding optimizations based on possible situations.
The atmosphere among the athletes who remained at the scene was a bit depressing, and only Qiu Wen seemed okay.
When Wang Ting saw the situation on the scene, he temporarily restrained his urge to comfort these athletes, and turned around to catch up with Su Bai.
"Coach Su Bai!"
Wang Ting chased after Su Bai and stopped him as he was heading towards the coach's office.
"Coach Wang?"
"Coach Su Bai..." After Wang Ting caught up with Su Bai, he looked a little hesitant. He looked at Su Bai, paused, and then said, "Well, Li Junhao is actually quite good. He didn't mean any other thing when he talked back just now. This kid is just a little spoiled and can't accept the gap..."
Hearing Wang Ting say this, Su Bai of course knew what he meant. Su Bai did not want to make Wang Ting worry, so he said very straightforwardly: "Coach Wang, don't worry, I know what you mean." After a pause, Su Bai added: "In fact, among the current players, Li Junhao is also one of the players I value the most."
"This..." When Wang Ting heard Su Bai's words, he widened his eyes slightly, seeming a little unconvinced.
What Su Bai said was all true.
During these two days, he has also been reviewing a lot of information about the 400-meter runners who have joined the national team, and has also activated all the corresponding simulated athletes in the system space.
Regardless of whether it is the athlete potential data viewed from the system observation authority, or the test data given after using simulated athletes to eliminate interference factors, Li Junhao's project potential is completely different from Zhang Ziyi, and some data is even higher than Zhang Ziyi, who is relatively average overall.
The biggest problem with Li Junhao is that he has poor mental stability and is too sensitive, which directly leads to him getting angry and frustrated easily when criticized by the outside world after losing a competition. When such situation accumulates to a certain extent, it may even make him give up on himself and completely fall into a terrible vicious circle.
However, his personality appears to be somewhat sensitive and sharp, and he seems to be a thorn in the side just like Cui Luoheng before, making it difficult for people to detect his low mood after he develops psychological problems.
Li Junhao has great talent. When he participated in youth competitions, he did not feel as much pressure as after he was promoted to the adult group. His early condition was always good. After being promoted to the adult group, he ran a result of less than 47 seconds in almost the first year. Such results and age have made him the focus of attention. We hope that he can grow up quickly, take over his teammate Zhang Ziyi's position as the number one 400m runner, and break the national record of 400m as soon as possible.
However, because he had accumulated too many such expectations, he had built up pressure that exceeded his psychological capacity. After losing a certain game, his teammates and Wang Ting didn't say anything, but just asked him to try harder in the next game. However, he still felt the disappointed gazes of the people around him. From that time on, his performance began to fluctuate dramatically, and in this year's 18th outdoor season, he hasn't even been able to get back to his form.
It was only after Su Bai looked at Li Junhao's overall attributes, repeatedly read through his competition records, training status curves over the years, and cleaned, replaced and compared the data of two simulated athletes of Li Junhao that he finally determined that his problem was indeed psychological.
In Su Bai's plan, this practice match, in addition to serving as a warning to all athletes and letting them step out of the 'greenhouse', is also to completely break Li Junhao's original psychological endurance bottom line. This seemingly cruel method is used to raise his psychological threshold, and in future training, his psychological stability will be gradually enhanced.
Su Bai didn't make his words so clear for the time being. He just looked at Wang Ting and said seriously, "As for Li Junhao, I am really optimistic about his potential in this project. At the same time, I also think that his ability is not as good as he has shown so far. Coach Wang, don't worry, I will not be prejudiced against him because of his performance today."
"Well... that's good." Wang Ting shook his head with a wry smile. He didn't say anything more, but followed Su Bai towards the coach's office. He was afraid that he would be too worried and soft-hearted, and would look back and see that the athletes were in a low mood and couldn't help but comfort them, which would ruin Su Bai's plan.
The next morning, in preparation for the afternoon practice match, the athletes did not conduct more complex training, but simply did a simple 30-minute relaxation run to reserve sufficient physical strength for the afternoon match.
Five 400-meter runners from the United States, including Zhang Ziyi from the national team, also came to the training ground for a relaxation run. Although they had just flown from the United States to City B the day before, logically they should not have been able to adjust to the jet lag well, but these runners often run competitions in various countries, and have developed a relatively mature way of dealing with issues such as adjusting to jet lag and adjusting their personal status across competitions.
After arriving at the training ground, the American players greeted Zhang Ziyi and others with a smile, and then began their warm-up and light adaptive training very easily.
Ever since these American 400m runners showed up, the atmosphere on the training ground became a little tense, or it could be said that these 400m runners of the national team were unilaterally nervous. On the other hand, the five American runners were all very relaxed, as if they were competing in their own home court.
In the national team, even for Zhang Ziyi, who has more experience in international competitions, the pressure at the moment is too much to bear. However, as the leader of the domestic 400-meter event, no matter how much pressure he feels, he can't say anything else at this moment.
Among all the players, there was probably only one Qiu Wen left. He was simply nervous about the afternoon practice match and did not consider other issues such as face.
In Qiu Wen's straightforward thinking, he is just a newcomer who has switched to 400 meters for less than a year. He certainly knows that he has good talent because Xiaobai said so; but he also knows that there is a huge gap between domestic and foreign events in the 400 meters event.
In Qiu Wen's opinion, he admitted this fact very frankly, so at this moment, he was more nervous about competing with a very strong opponent.
The players around Qiu Wen also felt Qiu Wen's innocent mentality to some extent, but most of them could not be as calm as Qiu Wen.
[American players... don't represent the level of the US national team...]
[The best results of these players last year were between 50th and 100th in the world. Their results under normal conditions are definitely lower. Add to that the jet lag and other issues, and they may not be able to perform very well, right? 】
"Brother Chuan." Zhou Xu called Lin Chuan quietly, and said nervously: "What do you think these American athletes can achieve in the afternoon race?"
Lin Chuan also smiled bitterly: "Who knows? I looked at the IAAF website and saw the results of last year's 400m event rankings of 50th to 100th place."
“…How much?”
Domestic athletes like Zhou Xu usually pay more attention to the performance of domestic athletes of the same level and the real-time competition results of top Asian and world athletes. They don't really know much about the annual data rankings on the IAAF website.
“The 51st place is 45.23 seconds, and the 100th place is 45.65 seconds.”
"……this."
Zhou Xu took a breath, and then became even more depressed.
The domestic 400-meter national record is 45.25 seconds, which has not been broken for more than ten years. However, this national record was not even ranked in the top 50 in the international annual data ranking of 400 meters last year.
Usually, all the athletes know that the domestic 400-meter event is not strong, but when they really see this kind of data in front of them, to put it bluntly, it feels like a frog in a well finally opening his eyes to the world.
"45.65... no matter how bad the condition is, it should be within 47 seconds at least." Zhou Xu gritted his teeth and said, "Whatever, let's fight hard this afternoon. Damn, our coach Su is really ruthless. There will be so many young bastards from the sports school watching this afternoon. If the result is too bad, will we be able to meet people in the future?"
After saying this, Zhou Xu closed his mouth and said no more.
What else can I do?
There are no contestants, so we can only try our best.
At 2:40 p.m., at the track and field training arena of the National Track and Field Team Training Base, the trapezoidal audience area was recently occupied by several hundred students who came to visit from the B City Sports School. These students certainly had feelings of respect and expectation for the national team. Although the 400-meter race they watched today was only a relatively weak event, this did not hinder their support for their national team players.
Not only these students, but also the head coach of the track and field team's sprint group Pei Jinan and the director of the competition group of the Athletics Management Center Jiang Wentao have arrived at the scene. The two stood together with Wang Ting and Su Bai.
Among the four, Pei Jinan, Jiang Wentao, and Wang Ting all had obvious nervousness on their faces. Even though they had known Su Bai's plan for a long time, they still couldn't help but feel worried when the time came.
The official practice match was divided into two games. As planned before, these American players will cooperate with the seven players from the national team to run two consecutive events, and four of them will run both games.
In the national team, Zhang Ziyi, Qiu Wen and Guo Dun were scheduled to play in the first game, and the remaining four players including Lin Chuan will appear in the second game.
Because they were nervous about the competition, Zhang Ziyi and Guo Dun had to spend more time warming up so that they could calm down. While warming up, they were quite envious of Qiu Wen, the only one who seemed to have no psychological burden for the game.
“It’s about to begin!”
As the scheduled practice session time arrived, no matter how much pressure they were under, Zhang Ziyi and his companions followed the American team's players to the track and prepared for the track assigned by Su Bai.
It should be said that Su Bai did as he said and left them enough advantages - for example, in the track arrangement, Zhang Ziyi, Guo Dun and Qiu Wen were arranged on tracks 4, 5 and 6, while the American players from afar were scattered on other tracks on both sides.
However, this track arrangement has made Zhang Ziyi and others feel even more stressed.
The students from the B City Sports School in the audience were unaware of the struggles of their predecessors on the track. After seeing them go on the track, the students in the audience cheered and enthusiastically encouraged the athletes of the national team.
Soon, the competition began in this state of excitement among the audience, tension among the athletes and relaxation among the opponents.
Next to the track, the person in charge of starting the race is the assistant coach of the national team. When he shouts "Get set, get ready," the athletes on the track are ready, and then after the starting gun sounds, the race officially begins!
On the track, at the start, Qiu Wen, Zhang Ziyi and Guo Dun all had good starting reactions. Judging from the starting acceleration phase, some of these American athletes were not very good at starting on corners, so just looking at the starting phase, Zhang Ziyi and Qiu Wen's speeds were in the middle.
But after passing the starting acceleration curve, the second half of the first half of the race began, and the absolute speed advantage of these American athletes gradually began to emerge.
In the first 100 meters, the segmented speeds of these American athletes generally reached around 10.90 seconds, with the speed distribution ranging from approximately 10.70 seconds to 11 seconds. The speeds of Zhang Ziyi, Guo Dun and Qiu Wen were the fastest, with Qiu Wen at 10.89 seconds, while Zhang Ziyi and Guo Dun were around 11 seconds.
In fact, Qiu Wen ran a little crazy today because the excitement of fighting against a strong enemy made him lose his usual self-control. Zhang Ziyi and Guo Dun were under great pressure and gritted their teeth to run at a better speed within their control.
In the second 100 meters, due to a long straight section, the absolute speed advantage of these American athletes was finally fully demonstrated!
In the second 100-meter stage, the average performance of these American athletes was around 10.50 seconds. Among the three athletes, even Qiu Wen, who ran the craziest, ran at a speed of 10.80 seconds.
On the field, the changes in speed between the players can be seen clearly from the perspective of the audience.
If Pei Jinan and others only frowned slightly in the first 100-meter stage, then in the second 100-meter stage, their brows never relaxed.
"The gap... is still too big."
Seeing the best players of their national team being ruthlessly crushed by American players on the same field, Pei Jinan and his friends found it hard to accept, regardless of whether they had prepared themselves mentally or not.
Beside the track, Lin Chuan and his companions had finished warming up and were watching the game, waiting for the next round to begin.
Their faces looked very bad at this moment. After all, Zhang Ziyi and his companions were indeed the best among them, but they were also being ruthlessly beaten on the track.
"Is this kind of practice match... really meaningful?!"
Li Junhao's face looked very bad, and he asked this question again.
Lin Chuan thought about it and nodded, "Trust the coach. Since he arranged such a practice match for us, he must have a deep meaning..."
Lin Chuan actually roughly understood what Su Bai meant, but he also felt that Su Bai's approach was too cruel. If they were placed in front of them with this bloody reality, how would they rebuild their confidence in the game?
one way or another……
"Run as fast as you can."
Lin Chuan let out a long sigh, and then prepared himself to fight with all his strength.
The first game ended without any suspense. Zhang Ziyi, the best performer in the national team, only finished sixth. His final result was 46.23 seconds, which was his second best result this season.
Qiu Wen ranked seventh with 46.36 seconds. He rushed too hard in the first two 100-meter stages and consumed too much physical energy, resulting in a serious drop in speed after the third 100-meter stage. The time difference between the first and second half was almost 3 seconds.
Guo Dun also ran one of his best results this season, but ultimately had to finish last.
Among the five athletes from the United States, the best ran 45.56 seconds and the worst was 46.07 seconds. These American athletes did follow Su Bai's requirements and did not show any mercy to their Chinese opponents in the practice match. The five of them directly swept the top 5 rankings.
When the competition reached the final stage, watching the American athletes cross the finish line one after another, even the cheers of the sports school students in the audience became silent, so that the final arena seemed a bit awkward.
This was the case with the first game and the second game as well.
When Li Junhao gritted his teeth and endured the tearing pain in his trachea when he crossed the finish line, the American athletes in front of him had already crossed the line.
After crossing the finish line, Li Junhao kept gasping for breath, his hands clenched into fists, and the unwillingness in his eyes almost overflowed.
He knew that they could not beat these foreign players, but in today's practice match, in today's competition atmosphere, even though he had all the advantages, he still could not outrun these foreign guys...
At times like this, the unwillingness in my heart surged up especially strongly.
Why?
Is it true that China’s 400-meter performance is not as good as that of foreigners?
Is it true that China really has no hope of beating these foreigners in the 400-meter race?
…
Many contestants who participated in today's competition and even the audience students in the stands, Jiang Wentao, Pei Jinan, Wang Ting and others, could not help but ask this question in their hearts.
These domestic 400-meter sprinters, who had been living in a greenhouse, were forced to open their eyes and face the world in today's competition.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
