Chapter 8 The New Women's Army Has Arrived
The World Youth Championships officially concluded in mid-March.
Two female singles players from Northeast China ranked 28th, securing two more spots for my country in the World Junior Championships. However, what attracted Yang Yiyan even more was the newly crowned World Junior Champion, Ria Mengchuan.
She stood on the highest podium, smiling as she held the gold medal in her hands, with runner-up Lyubov and third-place Nina beside her. The screen displayed their scores, with Yumikawa Ria scoring more than five points higher than Lyubov.
Many people might not think much of these five points, but if you take out the individual scores of the three and compare them, you will be surprised to find that Yumikawa Ria's total technical score is almost thirteen points higher than the second place, and both of her programs are ranked first in technical score, but her program content score does not rank in the top five.
It wasn't that Yumikawa Ria wasn't emotionally engaged; rather, the referees were protecting the European and American athletes.
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics were held in Russia, and in every one of the four figure skating events, Russian judges were sure to support their own athletes. The first step was to solidify the fans' impression of the athletes when they first started competing, and the most direct way to do this was through their performance.
Xia Yuezi specially picked out Mengchuan Liya's score sheet and placed it in front of Yang Yiyan. The girl was envious of Mengchuan Liya's technical score of 38.76.
"Although figure skating is an art form, it is still a sport. In the face of absolute strength, everything else is just empty talk."
This was a sentence Li Tan said to Xia Yuezi when she was practicing 3A, and now Xia Yuezi is passing it on to Yang Yiyan verbatim.
This gave Yang Yiyan an incredibly high level of energy during the next few days of training.
Xia Yuezi sat in her office, looking at the data recorded in her notebook, unable to suppress the smile on her lips, and even hummed a short pop song.
When Li Tan came to find her, this was the scene he saw at the door. He raised his hand and knocked on the open door. Xia Yuezi looked up at the sound and was taken aback when she saw who it was.
Li Tan walked in and greeted him naturally: "What are you so happy about? You're almost jumping out of your chair."
"Nothing much, just checking on Xiaoyan's recent training progress," Xia Yuezi closed her notebook and asked, "Did you come to see me for something?"
"Here's the thing, a batch of new players have joined the team, and you don't have many athletes under your supervision. I was wondering if you would like to take on a few more."
Before the National Championships each year, each provincial team sends a group of coaches to scout out promising young players. After the National Championships, these players are brought back to the team for comprehensive training, and only those who pass the training can enter the provincial team.
Xia Yuezi lowered her eyes to look at the list in Li Tan's hand, then took it and flipped through it.
To be honest, Xia Yuezi didn't have any plans to recruit more students at the moment, but since the leader came to her personally, how could she dare to say no?
The list included both women's and men's singles players, and Xia Yuezi wasn't very familiar with many of them. When she turned to the second to last page, she stopped.
Feng Simai, the future second-best player in China. Ice hockey fans always compare him to Lin Ye, the number one player, suggesting they learn from each other and complement each other's weaknesses.
Lin Ye has high difficulty levels, but poor skating performance. Every time he is ranked in a competition, many skating fans are disappointed and cry to the coaching staff to go back and work on him. Feng Simai has good skating performance, but his difficulty level is not high. Throughout his career, he has only performed two super C jumps, 3A and 4T. He only performed a quadruple jump after the Sochi Winter Olympics, and his success rate is not high.
Whether one can perform four jumps, and how many, certainly depends on jumping talent, but for Feng Simai, height has a greater impact.
There's a common misconception that the developmental hurdle is easier for men's singles players than for women's singles players. In reality, every year some men's singles players stumble because of their height, but most of them remain relatively unknown during their junior years, even failing to make a name for themselves domestically.
Feng Simai is a rare tall player in Asian men's singles. He was already 177 cm tall after his first growth spurt, and he experienced a second growth spurt around the age of 20, which propelled him to 183 cm. This has led Feng Simai to constantly adjust his center of gravity and increase muscle training.
Xia Yuezi asked, somewhat puzzled, "Don't any coaches want him?"
Although Feng Simai's difficulty level is not high now, it shouldn't have fallen to the point where no one cares about her.
Noticing that Xia Yuezi was still looking at that spot, Li Tan's expression was also a little unnatural: "At first, Coach Wang went to talk to him, but he is currently training Meng Yi and doesn't have much time to train new players. Xiao Yan won a medal at the National Championships, and you deserve a lot of credit. I just wanted to ask for your opinion."
As Xia Yuezi listened to Li Tan's explanation, she flipped through the list in her hand, her expression unchanged, but a hint of sarcasm welled up inside her.
If she remembered correctly, Feng Simai was now in a period of rapid growth, and it was highly likely that Wang Can was frightened by her height, which was why he was in a hurry to return her.
Is she some kind of trash can?
They couldn't bring him out themselves, so they just dumped him on her and pushed Li Tan out to be the villain.
Xia Yuezi grew angrier the more she thought about it, and cursed him in her heart. No wonder Wang Can was always the ace coach of the provincial team, sending all the good talents to him. As long as the training wasn't too outrageous, achieving good results was a given.
Is this the advantage of having a powerful family background? How come she didn't notice Wang Can's dual nature when he was an athlete?
“I can take on this child,” Xia Yuezi said, placing the list on the table and looking directly at Li Tan. There were some things she still needed to make clear. “But you know Xiaoyan’s situation, and there are other children as well. I hope I have enough energy to develop a training plan that suits them.”
Li Tan breathed a sigh of relief and immediately agreed: "That's only right. As a coach, I should put the students first."
"When will he join the team?" Xia Yuezi turned on her computer, ready to learn more about her second brother now.
"This weekend."
Li Tan chatted casually for a few more minutes, and seeing that Xia Yuezi was gradually getting into her work mode, he didn't want to disturb her any longer, so he quietly left.
Feng Simai is 14 years old this year. She was Lin Ye's substitute in the World Youth Championships. After returning to China, she still has a lot of missed schoolwork to catch up on.
As a niche sport, figure skating has not achieved outstanding results overall, and there are not many comprehensive universities willing to accept figure skaters. In addition, Feng Simai's parents hope that he can focus on both academic studies and training, which means that he has to face a group of private tutors when he is only in the first year of junior high school.
When Xia Yuezi called to find out what was going on, Feng Simai's mother was talking to her foreign language teacher.
"Coach, please wait a moment."
Xia Yuezi stood by the window, holding her phone, listening to the footsteps of Feng's mother and the sound of the door closing, interspersed with a few increasingly soft American English sentences.
After waiting for a while, we heard Feng's mother say, "Coach Xia, you've been waiting for a long time. My child has a lot of studies to do."
Xia Yuezi thought to herself: If the second year of junior high is considered to be academically demanding, then the first year of senior high must be crushing. No wonder Feng Simai refused to go home to check his college entrance exam scores back then, and even cried in his coach's arms after seeing his score.
“It’s okay, I understand. I called to ask if I could come over this weekend to get a feel for the situation so that we can start training according to the schedule next week.”
Even though Xia Yuezi had experience competing with Feng Simai, she still couldn't be sure how good he was now.
“That’s no problem,” Mrs. Feng said, looking through her phone’s schedule. “Is Saturday morning okay?”
"Sure, but I have students practicing on the ice this morning. If you don't mind, you can get to know them beforehand."
………………
At the provincial team training center, most athletes were doing land training, and there weren't many people on the ice rink.
Feng Simai stood near the ice rink, watching Yang Yiyan perform four triple jumps in a row on the ice like she was possessed by a spring spirit.
He exchanged a glance with his mother. Quan Jin and the others were there last time, and they had all seen Yang Yiyan's skill level. Just three months later, she was able to play Lian Lo on the ice as a warm-up.
After Yang Yiyan finished her ice training session, Feng's mother went up to greet her, speaking very politely: "Coach Xia, hello."
"Hello." Xia Yuezi shook hands with her, her gaze involuntarily drifting to the young man beside her.
Feng's mother is about 1.7 meters tall, which is considered tall for a woman. Feng Simai standing next to her is about the same height as her, even though she is wearing high heels.
Yang Yiyan, wearing ice skates, barely reached Feng Simai's shoulder. She held a water cup and looked up at the boy who was warming up.
Xia Yuezi's students were all girls, and Feng Simai was the first male singles player in their group of girls. She was quite curious about this guy's strength.
Feng Simai changed into his skates and went on the ice, skating a segment of his short program for this season, "Por Una Cabeza".
Xia Yuezi looked up with great interest when she heard the opening music.
This song is a famous Spanish tango, which has been used in movie music to create classic scenes. It is also a popular choice for figure skating, but it is used relatively less in men's singles.
She picked up her notebook and made notes in it.
He moved in sync with the music, from initial confusion to his body swaying to the rhythm. Every movement seemed to be an invitation, a plea to stay, as if he were truly dancing the tango with someone.
It's no wonder that Feng Simai is always called the "artistic jellyfish." If Xia Yuezi were the judge, she would be willing to give her a level four for both skating and spinning. Moreover, Feng Simai has now found a style that suits her.
After the show ended, Xia Yuezi looked at the boy who was gradually gliding over and asked, "Are you still keeping up with the stamina?"
Feng Simai's program has obvious strengths, but equally obvious weaknesses - his physical fitness is not good, his axis is not stable enough, and he is very careful before each jump, for fear of falling.
The tall man in front of him took a breath, hesitated for a moment, and then dared to tell the truth: "It used to be enough, but I've gotten a lot heavier since I grew taller."
The drastic change in height made each jump heavy for him, and even his axis of rotation became unstable.
Originally, his short program consisted of a 3LZ and a 3F+3T, but in this performance, in order to ensure the integrity of the program and leave a good impression on the new coach, he lowered the difficulty and changed the 3T combination jump to a 2T.
Xia Yuezi understood: "Okay, don't train too hard for now, eat more protein powder and build up your muscles."
"Huh?" Feng Simai was momentarily stunned.
"What do you mean, 'ah'?" Xia Yuezi said irritably, "If you don't improve your physical fitness, I'm afraid you'll be doing a series of falls in the competition."
After all, this kind of thing had happened to him more than once or twice since he became an adult.
Standing to the side, Feng's mother reacted first than Feng Simai. She pulled her son up, following Xia Yuezi's words, to show that she could definitely do it.
Yang Yiyan, who was sitting to the side, had not yet recovered from the performance. She looked at Feng Simai silently. This boy, who had stood next to his mother the whole time and hadn't said much, actually had such strong artistic expression.
Is this the legendary calm madness?
A note from the author:
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