Chapter 229
Some people always say that the 2020 season is the year when Chinese sprinting begins to take off.
But there are still some viewers who would rather push the starting point of China's sprinting take-off forward to the 2018 season.
That year, Su Yu officially debuted in the Chinese track and field arena. This was his first full season in his career after his debut in a single race at the end of the 2017 season.
In this season, Su Yu demonstrated his ability in the two sprint events of 100 meters and 200 meters for the first time, like a shining star emerging out of nowhere.
From the national U16 best result in the 100 meters to the national U18 best and even the world U18 best, and then to various records in the 200-meter sprint and 400-meter sprint. Since his first season when he debuted, this boy who was always teased by fans as an autistic player in various variety shows and interviews, under the watchful eyes of the whole world, has walked out a path that no one could have imagined, step by step.
——"Su Yu, a genius in the absolute sense!" 》
——"The brightest oriental star in the world track and field arena!" 》
——"A legendary genius from an ancient oriental country! 》
Ever since Su Yu swept the WU18B records in 100m, 200m and 400m, he has been the darling of sports media all over the world. Whenever Su Yu participates in an international competition, there will always be sports media willing to follow his footsteps and conduct the latest interviews with him.
After the first peak of Su Yu's career at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, due to the transition of old and new players in the Chinese track and field team's sprint lineup, many people were worried about Su Yu, who was only 18 years old at the time, and believed that it would be difficult for Su Yu, who was only 18 years old at the time, to shoulder the burden of being the core of the team.
But the fact is, at the Asian Championships held in H City, China that same year, Su Yu led the Chinese track and field sprint team composed of young athletes to sweep the Asian Championships again - this was also the first time that the Chinese team swept the gold medals in the four individual events of men's 100m, 200m and 400m and men's 4*100m sprint at the Asian Championships.
In late July of the same year, after finishing the Asian Championships, Su Yu once again went to Oregon, USA with the national track and field team, and immediately participated in the 2021 Oregon Track and Field World Championships.
As the two events were closely connected, all members of the Chinese team's sprint group, except Zheng Tianxi, had just finished the Asian Championships and then traveled to Oregon, USA to compete. Therefore, for this "tired team", commentators around the world believed that it would be difficult for the Chinese team to achieve an excellent result in this World Championships.
At that time, even the domestic media believed that the national team had not made a good plan to split into two groups to participate in the competition - for the sake of the World Championships, the national team should appropriately give up part of the Asian Championships schedule.
However, as the Asian Championships is held in a Chinese city, no one thinks that giving up the Asian Championships would be the right choice.
This debate continued until the start of the men's 100m sprint preliminaries at the World Championships.
Su Yu, Zheng Tianxi and Ye Minghao, who won the qualification for the last World Championships men's 100m sprint for the first time by virtue of his IAAF points ranking and his victory in the World Championships trials, all successfully advanced to the semifinals in the World Championships preliminaries.
Among them, Su Yu and Zheng Tianxi won the first place in their groups with a score of 9.97 and 9.98 respectively. Ye Minghao managed to advance to the next round with a score of 10.15 by chance, ranking third among the remaining players.
With the strong performance of Su Yu and Zheng Tianxi in the preliminaries, the previous voices of doubt were temporarily extinguished - but everyone knew that if Su Yu could not maintain the results and form in the preliminaries in the next games, the previous doubts against the Chinese team would still not stop.
However, he won the bronze medal in the 100m preliminaries with 9.97 seconds, the semifinals with 9.93 seconds, and the final with 9.88 seconds.
Su Yu completely silenced all the doubters around the world with his irrefutable performance.
18-year-old World Championship bronze medalist!
In this final, Su Yu defeated Zheng Tianxi and stepped onto the podium of the World Championships with a score of 9.88 seconds, allowing the world's attention to once again realize the incredible strength and performance of this talented sprinter from China.
In the same final, Zheng Tianxi unfortunately failed to win a medal with a score of 9.91 seconds, but the change of positions between him and Su Yu seemed to allow the whole world to witness at this moment the most perfect inheritance of the new and old generations of core members of the Chinese sprint team.
After the men's 100m sprint final, in the subsequent men's 200m sprint, China's three players Su Yu, Zhou Yuang and Zhan Youming all successfully advanced to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, Zhan Youming successfully advanced to the final with a score of 19.89, while Su Yu successfully qualified for the World Championships final for the first time with a score of 20.05.
Then, in the men's 200m final, four American athletes competed for the men's 200m sprint medal. In the end, DaMarcus Collins, who had naturalized in Liberia, was defeated by the three athletes of the American team and retired with a score of 19.84 seconds, only winning fourth place in the final.
Zhan Youming and Su Yu won the fifth and sixth place in the final, with their final results being 19.90 and 20.01 respectively.
At that time, Su Yu, who was only 18 years old, was only one step away from breaking the 20-second mark in the 200 meters.
In the subsequent men's 400m sprint semi-finals, Su Yu successfully won the qualification for the final with a time of 44.73 seconds, and won the bronze medal in the 400m final of the World Championships with a time of 44.38 seconds.
From the men's 100m, 200m to 400m events, not only did they all advance to the finals, but they also won two medals in the finals!
At only 18 years old, Su Yu once again surpassed many world championship names with his amazing performance and became the focus of attention from all over the world.
Everyone is wondering what kind of threat this talented athlete from the Chinese team will pose to sprinters around the world when he turns 20.
Since Zheng Tianxi broke the yellow race's 100-meter record and Asian men's 100-meter sprint record with a time of 9.83 seconds last season, some experts have again asserted that the yellow race's 100-meter limit should be 9.80 seconds.
But after Su Yu ran 9.88 seconds in the men's 100m sprint final of the World Track and Field Championships in Oregon, officially breaking the 9.90 second mark, sports commentators around the world fell silent once again.
Everyone has already thrown the experts' speculations behind their backs, and at the same time, they all believe that in the near future, Su Yu will definitely break the 9.83 second mark and become the next athlete to break the Asian men's 100-meter record!
At this year's Oregon Track and Field World Championships, the Chinese team successfully won two medals in the men's sprint event thanks to Su Yu alone.
Although the Chinese men's 4*100m sprint relay team composed of Su Yu, Zhan Youming, Chen Yifei and Ye Minghao failed to win a medal in the final of the World Championships, their result of 37.90 seconds has already broken the 38-second mark, and the gap with the British team that won the bronze medal was only 0.1 seconds.
Such a young team was able to maintain their excellent form and performance when they faced strong opponents from all over the world in their first World Championships. Such performance also relieved the Chinese track and field fans and spectators who were nervous before the game.
After experiencing the baptism of two consecutive events, the Asian Championships and the World Championships, even the most demanding and picky spectators have to admit that the new and old inheritance of the Chinese track and field team's men's sprint is no longer in turmoil.
Whether it is Su Yu, Chen Yifei, Ye Minghao, or Zhou Yuang, they have all proved their strength to the world with their outstanding performances.
At the Oregon Track and Field World Championships, audiences around the world were surprised to find that in addition to Zheng Tianxi, Feng Chuming, Zhan Youming and Su Yu, young players such as Chen Yifei, Ye Minghao, Zhou Yuang, who made their debut at this World Championships, also had outstanding strength and potential.
As a result, for a while, the "Chinese track and field threat theory" once again became popular.
The experts who once clamored that the yellow race had poor sprinting talent have now fallen silent - perhaps the yellow race's sprinting talent is indeed not as good as that of blacks and whites, but China has a population of 1.4 billion and a vast territory. As China has laid out the talent screening grid at the grassroots level in sprinting talent screening, and with the birth of world-class sprinting star athletes of pure Chinese descent like Su Yu, the base of China's track and field enthusiasts has expanded rapidly.
Now that the talent screening system is gradually improving, the audience base is increasing, and the coaching level is gradually improving, China's outstanding sprint athletes will surely emerge like mushrooms after a rain.
Be it 100m, 200m or 400m sprint.
In an environment of rapid level improvement like China's, the shackles of the past will gradually be broken - the era of the continuous emergence of Chinese track and field sprinting talents is coming!
***
April 2, 2024, China Track and Field Paris Olympic Training Team Training Base
"Team Islet!"
"Team Yu, are you here?"
"Ang brother!"
"Brother Ye!"
At the training base of the national track and field team, as several young figures appeared, the sprinters of the track and field team who had already arrived for training began to greet these young athletes.
Naturally, those who came to the scene together were Su Yu, Zhou Yuang, Ye Minghao, Jiang Ruohui, Chen Yifei and other current main players in the men's sprint events.
Several of them will be in the Paris Olympic training team, and of course they are all athletes preparing for the Paris Olympics. However, among them, only Su Yu and Zhou Yuang have truly won the qualification for the Paris Olympics by meeting the standards of their personal performance.
Relying on his performance in the 2023 Budapest Athletics World Championships last season, Su Yu had already easily reached the qualification for the men's 100m, 200m and 400m sprints at this Paris Olympics.
As the strongest flag of Chinese men's sprinting at present, Su Yu has already gained extremely high popularity not only in China but also around the world. At the same time, relying on his strong strength and outstanding personal image, as early as the 2021 season, after he successfully won two World Championships bronze medals, a large number of high-end luxury brands have extended olive branches to the Chinese track and field team.
At present, Su Yu may not be the domestic athlete with the most endorsements, but he is definitely the one with the highest commercial value among all Chinese athletes.
In Zhou Yuang's words, "Those people from luxury brands are eager to put a ten- or eight-dollar watch on Su Yu's wrist, and wait until the award ceremony to let the whole world see how expensive Su Yu's wrist is."
_(:зゝ∠)_That’s right, I don’t know since when, Zhou Yuang could no longer call Su Yu by the nickname Su Xiaoyu when facing her.
There's nothing he can do. As he gets older, Su Yu, who originally looked a little baby-faced, becomes more and more aloof - mainly because he is usually autistic and doesn't talk much when he's in front of the media. No one knows how he came up with this aloof image and temperament. In short, when Zhou Yuang faces Su Yu every day, especially when he occasionally looks at Su Yu, he doesn't know where to put his hands and feet.
It was only when chatting in the WeChat group that one could see that Su Yu still had the same personality as before - mainly if one couldn't see his face, the feeling of not knowing where to put his hands and feet would not be so obvious.
Ye Minghao and Jiang Ruohui also laughed at Zhou Yuang's cowardice in the group, but Zhou Yuang was very justified when facing such ridicule.
[Except for Yuanzi and the coach, who among you can look directly at Su Xiaoyu's face for more than 1 minute! 】
Tsk, say he is a coward - at least he can look at Su Xiaoyu's face for 10 seconds without blushing.
Damn it, it’s all because Su Xiaoyu’s face looks so ugly.
Of course, another reason why Zhou Yuang is so cowardly is his 5G surfing speed - because of Su Xiaoyu's face, Su Yu's fan base has become so wide that he can compete with the top stars in the entertainment industry for fans.
And among these fans… I don’t know what’s going on, they are keen on making CP stews every day, and the players in these CP stews include but are not limited to Pei Dingshan x Su Yu, Jiang Yuan x Su Yu, Ye Minghao x Su Yu, Jiang Ruohui x Su Yu, Chen Yifei x Su Yu, and him and Su Xiaoyu…
Anyway, as long as within a certain period of time, whoever's schedule overlaps the most with Su Yu, the CP popularity between him and Su Yu will continue to rise.
Not to mention them, Zhou Yuang has even seen Zheng Tianxi, Feng Chuming and Zhan Youming as a couple with Su Yu.
Maybe it’s because he’s seen too many CP mix-ups on the Internet, Zhou Yuang sometimes feels embarrassed to even look Su Yu in the face. But after seeing too many CP mix-ups like this, he inexplicably feels like he’s in a melon field, and sometimes he can’t help but wonder - among so many CPs related to Su Xiaoyu, which one is real?
:)
Of course, from his observation, given Su Xiaoyu’s autistic mode, it is highly likely that the sweetness that CP fans are shipping is fake.
Apart from……
Zhou Yuang's gaze swept towards Pei Dingshan not far away - Tsk, except for Pei Dingshan, this double-standard weirdo.
Zhou Yuang couldn't remember exactly when it started, but Pei Dingshan's dressing style had changed dramatically compared to when he first joined the national team.
To put it simply, when he first joined the national team, Pei Dingshan's dressing style was no different from that of veteran coaches such as Sun Gaoshu, Zheng Sheng and Liu Qinlong - he wore the national team coaching staff's sports suits every day, all of which were provided by the national team's sponsors.
It's not that he looks old-fashioned or ugly. After all, people on the Internet say that the degree of fashion is mainly determined by the face. If we have to talk about the face, then Pei Dingshan is one of the "top stars" of the track and field team. But at that time, Pei Dingshan probably wanted to cover up the "shortcoming" of being too young, so his dress made him look particularly "calm".
Coupled with Pei Dingshan's daily stern demeanor, in the first one or two years after joining the national track and field team, many people thought that Pei Dingshan was at least 30 years old - of course, as the head coach of the main athletes of the track and field team, even 30 years old is a very young age.
But no one knew when Pei Dingshan changed his original dressing style, and transformed from a 30-year-old veteran cadre into a 20-year-old college student.
Zhou Yuang was not exaggerating - especially in the last one or two years. Pei Dingshan is almost 29 years old this year, but he looks younger than when he first joined the national team. He looks to be about 24 or 25 years old.
There had been a misunderstanding before, where an assistant coach from other events who had just joined the track and field team mistakenly thought that Pei Dingshan was also a newcomer, and was planning to add Pei Dingshan to their group of new assistant coaches. As a result, when the national track and field team coaching staff held a meeting, Pei Dingshan, who looked younger than him, stood on the podium and began to speak as the deputy head coach of the national track and field team's sprint group.
However, it was probably because of Pei Dingshan's change in dressing style, and the fact that he was Su Yu's head trainer and now the deputy head coach of the national track and field team's sprint group. As Su Yu's performance improved, Pei Dingshan's popularity also increased.
Some brands were no longer satisfied with just inviting Su Yu to be their spokesperson, and began to inexplicably invite Pei Dingshan as well.
The two of them jointly endorsed and filmed several brands' advertisements as coach and player - the popularity was so high that after seeing the cool master-disciple combination of Pei Dingshan and Su Yu, CP fans on the Internet turned into screaming chickens, directly turning the master-disciple CP that was already as cold as the Arctic Circle into a top-tier CP.
But for Zhou Yuang, the saddest story is that these brands refused to include him when they invited them to be spokespersons for commercials, so that after Pei Dingshan and Su Yu’s commercials were all over the country... Oh no, all over the world, everyone knew about the duo of Pei Dingshan and Su Yu, but no one knew that he and Su Yu were real brothers.
:)
This world is so cruel.
Oh, leaving this matter aside, the reason why Zhou Yuang felt that the CP of Pei Dingshan and Su Yu did not seem fake was mainly because their respected coach Pei Dingshan was really an iron-blooded double-standard monster.
When facing other contestants, he didn't see any fresh expression on Pei Dingshan's face, but after seeing Su Xiaoyu...
***
At the training ground of the training base, Pei Dingshan relaxed his frown after seeing Su Yu and asked him, "How are you today?"
It is now April, and there are only about three months left until the Paris Olympics at the end of July.
In order to prepare for the Olympics and accumulate physical strength, Pei Dingshan has arranged a relatively light schedule for Su Yu this season. He will mainly let Su Yu run more in the next four or five months to get a feel for it, and then continue to adjust his physical condition in the subsequent stages to finally prepare for the Paris Olympics.
When Su Yu heard Pei Dingshan's question, he simply nodded: "It's okay."
From the age of 14 to the present, with the accumulation of experience in every game every year, he now has rich enough competition experience and can deal with it calmly when facing the state adjustment before each major competition.
This season he is about to participate in the second Olympic track and field competition in his career, and now he is no longer unfamiliar with the Olympic arena - the opponents he will face in the Olympics arena are those he will frequently meet in the Diamond League and IAAF Challenge every year.
He also has more confidence when facing these opponents.
Pei Dingshan glanced at Su Yu in front of him, and saw him nod calmly, with a faint smile in his eyes: "Okay, let's train as planned today. I'll come over to check on your condition later."
As the current deputy head coach of the national team's sprint group, Pei Dingshan now has a lot of complicated matters to pay attention to, so Cui Daize and another young coach are responsible for assisting in following up on Su Yu's training plan on a daily basis. Pei Dingshan will take time out to pay attention to Su Yu's training situation, but he cannot follow up the whole process.
Su Yu has long been accustomed to such situations. In addition to daily training time, he and Pei Dingshan still communicate frequently in private. Pei Dingshan will discuss with him the performance curves and reasons for changes of some key opponents, and jointly discuss the list of players who need special attention.
Perhaps it is because of Pei Dingshan's in-depth research and keenness in his own profession. Even though he is more sensitive to data than Pei Dingshan, Pei Dingshan can often grasp more important key points from the perspective of a coach.
I don’t know when it started, but Su Yu spent more and more time chatting with Pei Dingshan in private, even as much time as he chatted with Zhou Yuang and others in the group.
However... apart from Pei Dingshan and him, probably not many people know about this situation.
And their private chat... maybe it shouldn't be called chat? After all, the content they discussed together was very complicated, including but not limited to his training plan, competition plan and opponent situation. Occasionally, Pei Dingshan would discuss with him the training plan for other athletes in the sprint group.
Also because the two of them communicated frequently in private, he had a clearer understanding of the great pressure of the affairs on Pei Dingshan's hands.
Before Su Yu was about to turn around and leave for training, he subconsciously glanced at Pei Dingshan again, wanting to say something, but hesitated, and finally just said, "Then I'll go to training first."
Pei Dingshan looked at Su Yu in front of him - the child with a baby face in the past, but now that baby face has transformed into a face so good-looking that people dare not look at it directly, and when he doesn't speak, people even feel embarrassed to chase him and ask him questions.
But when Pei Dingshan looked at Su Yu, who seemed aloof, he knew clearly that Su Yu's essence had never changed.
Knowing that Su Yu was worried about him, Pei Dingshan moved his fingers, and finally he couldn't help but raised his hand and rubbed Su Yu's head with a smile. After seeing the young man, who was seen as aloof by others, blushing with embarrassment, he smiled and let go of his hand.
"Okay, let's go train hard."
Beside the two of them, Zhou Yuang turned and left with Su Yu with an expressionless face - see, Pei Dingshan, that double-standard dog, he must have forgotten that there was a disciple of his who he had picked up beside him who also needed comfort.
Tsk, if this isn't real sugar, then he should just rip his head off and let those CP fans online kick it like a ball! ! !
but……
Zhou Yuang touched his chin. He felt that these two people must not have broken the window paper yet.
If you ask him why he feels this way - the answer is that this is the innate intuition of a disciple picked up from the garbage dump!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
