Chapter 25
When Su Yu said he was taking a rest, he really meant it.
Taking into consideration the afternoon schedule and their condition, everyone ate lunch in moderation. After a short digestion, they returned to dormitory 303 and fell asleep.
Good deep sleep is the best rest and physical replenishment solution for athletes.
But even though the three of them returned to the dormitory together, Zhou Yuang hadn't fallen asleep yet. He looked to the right and found that Su Yu had obviously fallen asleep, while Jiang Yuan was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, and he didn't know whether he was asleep or not.
Just when Zhou Yuang sighed, he suddenly heard Jiang Yuan say "sleep, rest".
Zhou Yuang blinked when he heard the noise, then got up from the bed, hugged the quilt and sat cross-legged, and asked in a low voice: "Yuanzi, did you hear what the coach and the others said in the private room at first?"
When Jiang Yuan heard this, he gently opened his eyes and glanced in the direction of Zhou Yuang.
Zhou Yuang looked in the direction of Jiang Yuan and said, "The Olympic reserve talent training base is actually the reserve team of the national team. I have thought about this before. When I have the opportunity to be admitted to the provincial team, I must continue to apply for the Olympic reserve team."
Zhou Yuang's expression was more serious than before: "From the day I started running, I decided that I must go in the direction of professionalism."
"Being a professional athlete is my dream, and the Olympic reserve team is the highest goal I can achieve now."
"I originally thought that if I wanted to have a chance to compete for a spot in the Olympic reserve team, I would have to wait at least another year or two, or I would have to wait for Coach Pei to return to the national team before I would have a chance to be recommended to join the national team."
"Yuanzi, this is the first time I know how close I am to my dream."
Jiang Yuan, lying on the bed, listened to Zhou Yuan's words silently, and finally said softly: "Okay, take a rest."
"Hehe." Zhou Yuang touched his chin and lay back on his bed: "Okay, I won't disturb you and Xiaoyu from resting. You two go to sleep. I'll just lie down for a while. I'm too excited to sleep now."
After saying this, Zhou Yuang stopped talking and closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
However, Jiang Yuan in the middle couldn't fall asleep for a while after he finished talking about Zhou Yuang, even with his eyes closed.
In this dormitory, whether it is Su Yu or Zhou Yuang, both of them have very firm goals. Zhou Yuang has been determined to become a professional athlete since he was a child, while Xiao Yu...
Jiang Yuan turned his head and looked at Su Yu who was sleeping. He was the boy he had watched grow up. Even he was amazed by the energy and persistent belief in victory that burst out of Su Yu's bones during this period of time.
Obviously, as long as there is an opportunity, Xiaoyu will definitely sprint forward with determination.
So what about him?
Jiang Yuan slowly closed his eyes, and the vision of conquering the sky when he crossed the horizontal bar appeared in front of him again - it was only a moment, but it seemed like the eternity of memory.
Want to jump higher and farther?
Jiang Yuan asked himself in his heart.
Finally, he smiled quietly - at this moment, the answer that came to his mind was, yes.
***
At 2:15 in the afternoon, Su Yu and his two companions, who had had enough rest, returned to the base competition venue.
Unlike the preliminaries and qualifying rounds in the morning, the finals of all events will be held in the afternoon. As in the morning, the long jump final will be the first to start, but due to Jiang Yuan's presence, the position of the champion is almost no suspense in this final. The remaining players can only compete with Meng Yun from the junior group of Province G for the runner-up position.
Of course, some people actually think that Jiang Yuan may not be able to jump another outrageous score of 7.37 meters. However, after the competition started, before Jiang Yuan, who ranked first in the qualifying round according to the rules, was the last to appear, the performances of the seven finalists including Meng Yun were not very good.
Meng Yun, who ranked second in the qualifying round, only jumped 6.61 meters in his first jump. When he stood up from the sand pit after the jump, Meng Yun's face was obviously not very good - compared with his condition in the morning, he wanted to have a better result in the afternoon, but perhaps the more he thought about it, the more confused his thoughts became, so that the final result was far worse than the ideal.
Zhao Weiping, the leader of the G Province team, who was sitting in the coaching area of the audience, frowned slightly when he saw Meng Yun's performance, then sighed and said to Liu Wenjian beside him: "Coach Liu, your Jiang Yuan is putting too much pressure on the players of the same age group."
Liu Wenjian smiled after hearing this and said modestly, "Hasn't Jiang Yuan jumped yet?"
The coaches around couldn't help but roll their eyes at Liu Wenjian when they heard this - they had seen it from the high jump qualifying competition in the morning. With Jiang Yuan's current condition, wouldn't it make no difference whether he jumped or not?
Jiang Yuan’s mentality and state are so stable.
As expected, with the attention of all the coaches, Jiang Yuan on the field ran all the way from the starting line to the ground and finally landed - the trial jump result was valid and the final result was 7.31 meters.
This jump easily secured his victory in the long jump final.
***
Next to the competition venue, Su Yu and Zhou Yuang also watched Jiang Yuan's jump together.
Looking at Jiang Yuan who won almost easily, Zhou Yuan shook his head with a sigh: "Yuanzi is really awesome. I don't know what kind of opponent he will face to make him go all out."
Su Yu ignored Zhou Yuang's words. After seeing Jiang Yuan's first jump secure the victory, he turned and went to the warm-up venue for the 100-meter sprint.
Zhou Yuang saw Su Yu's actions, waved to Jiang Yuan, then turned around and followed Su Yu.
He was still muttering all the way to the warm-up field.
"Hey, Xiaoyu, in the 100-meter finals later, our room 303 will have a battle of dorm mates."
"Um."
"The finals will determine an important spot, so I have to give it my all."
"You don't have to give way."
"Hey, how about you give way to me, Xiaoyu?"
Su Yu frowned and glanced at Zhou Yuang: "I won't let you either."
Perhaps because Zhou Yuang's mumbling was a little abnormal, Su Yu turned his head to look at Zhou Yuang and suddenly said, "You are nervous."
Zhou Yuang was stunned by this sudden and straightforward statement. After a moment, he reached out and rubbed Su Yu's head. After being slapped away by Su Yu in disgust, he smiled and said, "Xiao Yu saw through you. I am a little nervous."
At this point, Zhou Yuang suddenly asked, "Hey, Xiaoyu, how about you tell me something else?"
Su Yu looked at him strangely: "Which one?"
Zhou Yuang bared his teeth and showed his signature smile, saying, "It's the one you told me before the preliminaries this morning."
Su Yu looked at him twice with a stern face, and then said to him word by word: "Don't worry about it, just focus on yourself."
Zhou Yuang laughed instantly, and hugged Su Yu fiercely: "Then I'll lend you my good words!"
Su Yu: “…”
Su Yu didn't understand why his words were considered "auspicious". He frowned and slapped Zhou Yuang's claws away. He ignored Zhou Yuang and walked towards the 100-meter warm-up venue.
There are a total of 8 athletes participating in the 100-meter final. They are all elite young players from various provincial teams and sports school teams who ranked in the top 8 in the total scores in the morning preliminaries. Among the 8 people, Ye Minghao is naturally the leader.
In the morning preliminaries, Ye Minghao easily won the first place in the overall preliminaries with a time of 10.98 seconds. He was also the only player to break the 11-second mark in the morning preliminaries.
Ranked second was Jiang Ruohui, who was also from the G Province team. Although Jiang Ruohui's rhythm was disrupted by Zhou Yuang's performance in the morning preliminaries, Jiang Ruohui still successfully ran a good result of 11.21 seconds and ranked second in the preliminaries.
Following closely behind was Tang Xianwen, who ran 11.27 seconds in the preliminaries, and in fourth place was Zhou Yuang, who broke through the shackles and set a new personal best in the morning race.
In the morning preliminaries, Su Yu, who ran 11.35 seconds, was only ranked fifth overall. The three players after him scored 11.39 seconds, 11.43 seconds and 11.49 seconds respectively.
Just as the coaches of each team predicted before the game, in this U16 base competition, in order to qualify for the men's 100m final, one must at least be able to run under 11.50 seconds.
But before this prediction came out, these coaches did not expect that Su Yu and Zhou Yuang from the S Province Sports Team Summer Camp would actually be able to win two qualifying spots in this preliminaries, and that they were not just lucky enough to make it to the finals at the bottom of the list, but instead achieved results in the middle of the finals.
At this time, in the coaching area, the coaches' attention has shifted to the warm-up area for the 100-meter final on the field.
In the warm-up area, eight players from each team have taken off their sports jackets and are wearing short-sleeved T-shirts and shorts. They are occupying different tracks on the field and making the final warm-up preparations before the game. Some of them are doing pre-race starting exercises, while others are sitting in the area in front of the starting line and doing splits and stretching. Each player has his own preparation rhythm and does not disturb each other.
Among these warm-up players, the one who received the most attention was undoubtedly Ye Minghao. After all, he was a young player who ran 10.56 seconds this season, which was only 0.06 seconds away from the national U16 men's 100-meter record. The coaches present were also looking forward to Ye Minghao breaking this record that had been untouched for 37 seconds as soon as possible.
"Coach Zhao, can you tell me what Ye Minghao's current condition is like?"
The coach's meaning when asking the question was very clear. He just wanted to see if Ye Minghao intended to break the 10.50 second record in this base competition.
Although Zhao Weiming was not the head coach of Ye Minghao and Jiang Ruohui, he was aware of Ye Minghao's plan this time. He had nothing to hide about Ye Minghao's thoughts, so he said directly: "Minghao mentioned to me at noon that he felt he was in good shape today. If nothing unexpected happens, he will try to break the record in the final this afternoon."
Although all the coaches had expected this, everyone still discussed it noisily for a while.
"If he said that, it seems that Ye Minghao is quite confident?"
"10.50 seconds! If he can break the record, he will be the most outstanding young athlete in the past 37 years, right?"
"In fact, not counting the 10.50 record, Ye Minghao's PB of 10.56 is already among the top three in the history of this age group in China, right?"
Knowing that Ye Minghao was going to break the record, the coaches present seemed to be more excited about the upcoming men's 100m final, but while they were looking forward to it, they couldn't help but talk about the athletes in the same group with Ye Minghao.
"Speaking of which, if Ye Minghao plans to break the record, the pressure on other players on the field will probably be even greater."
Upon hearing this topic, the coach whose team was in the final round couldn't help but look a little serious.
The high pressure on the players here does not mean that the players present will feel greater psychological pressure because they know that Ye Minghao is planning to break the record, but because if Ye Minghao plans to break the record, then with his strength, the overall rhythm he gives during the game will inevitably affect the players on the same field with him.
During the 100-meter race, although the athletes seem to be sprinting at full speed, in fact, during the overall sprint, the athletes still have their own running rhythm. Once a strong athlete sprints at full speed, it is entirely possible that he will affect the running rhythm of the athletes adjacent to him or even all the athletes in the field.
Once the players' rhythm is unbalanced during the game, especially those young players who lack competition experience, they are likely to be led by Ye Minghao's rhythm but unable to keep up with his rhythm. Eventually, they will consume too much physical energy during the sprint and their overall technical movements will be deformed. Not only will they not be able to run their usual results, they may even run at an extremely poor level.
Thinking of this, the coaches in the audience immediately asked: "Coach Wang, do you have the lane table for this game?"
Wang Changan nodded and signaled Wang Pengfei to distribute the lane list for this game to the coaches present. As a result, most of the coaches breathed a sigh of relief, but their faces turned a little strange after seeing the list.
Because on this lane list, the two people adjacent to Ye Minghao on the left and right are Jiang Ruohui, who is on the fourth lane on the left of Ye Minghao, and Su Yu, who has been the topic of everyone's discussion this morning, who is on the sixth lane on the right.
"This... the sixth one is Su Yu?"
After seeing the lane chart, the coaches present couldn't help but look at each other in bewilderment - from this lane chart, they did see the selflessness of the staff of the S Province Sports Team, but wasn't it a little too selfless?
It's okay for Jiang Ruohui in the fourth lane. According to the lane arrangement convention for sprinting, the lanes for the athletes will be arranged according to the final results of the previous race. The athletes with the best results will be arranged in the relatively middle lane. It is almost certain that Jiang Ruohui and Ye Minghao will be in adjacent lanes.
The problem of Jiang Ruohui and Ye Minghao being in adjacent lanes is actually not a big deal. In terms of Jiang Ruohui's strength, although he is slightly inferior to Ye Minghao, under the stimulation of Ye Minghao's state and rhythm in the final, it is entirely possible that he will be driven by Ye Minghao and strive for his own PB.
These two are both opponents and teammates, and they are very familiar with each other's rhythm. The problems that the coaches on the scene are worried about will not affect Jiang Ruohui.
But Su Yu is completely different.
This is a player who had absolutely no major competition experience before this base competition. His competition experience cannot be said to be little, but almost none.
Lack of competition experience means that he has come into contact with fewer players and has no idea of the competition rhythm of other players.
Under such circumstances, Su Yu is likely to be affected by other opponents and unable to maintain his own game rhythm.
The coaches present remembered that during lunch, Wang Changan had said that the matter of recommending places would be discussed after the afternoon game... Now it seems that it is no longer a slim hope but an absolute impossibility for Su Yu to get one of the top three qualifying spots in this game.
With this thought in mind, the coaches present couldn't help but look in the direction of Pei Dingshan a few more times.
Someone asked: "Coach Xiao Pei, do you think Su Yu still has a chance to compete for the final spot in this game?"
During the discussion, Pei Dingshan remained calm and composed. After hearing this question, he turned his gaze to the direction of Su Yu on the field and said slowly, "Who can know the result of the game until it's over?"
The coaches present listened to Pei Dingshan's answer and smiled, thinking that this was probably the stubbornness of a young coach who wanted to save face. Although Pei Dingshan had indeed received training at the Lyles College abroad and obtained a certificate, young people had little experience after all, and the outcome would be clear after the game was over.
With this idea in mind, the coaches began to discuss who would be able to get the top three rankings in the finals later, which would be the direct selection spots for the final Olympic reserve talent training base.
"As long as Ye Minghao and Jiang Ruohui perform normally, there will be no doubt. The other one will probably be in Tang Xianwen's hands, right?"
"Speaking of which, Zhou Yuang from the S Province Sports Team performed well in the preliminaries this morning. If he can get the final spot, maybe it would be a good choice for Coach Wang to give one of the two extra recommendation spots to Su Yu?"
"That's right. Although Su Yu's position in this round is not ideal, I think it won't be a problem for him to get a recommendation spot based on his reaction ability and other talents."
***
On the warm-up field, Su Yu didn't know what topics the coaches in the audience were discussing. Or, even if he knew what these coaches were talking about him, he didn't care.
After all, whether it is lack of experience or insufficient strength, these are facts for him.
Su Yu doesn't mind how others talk about him. After all, he has never been a sociable person since he was a child. Those who are willing to accept him will become his friends, and those who are unwilling to accept him, no matter how they talk about him, what does it have to do with him?
For example, every person who discusses him - no matter how these people discuss, what does it have to do with his final outcome of the game?
The victory or defeat of a game depends only on his own strength and his performance in the game.
When the on-site staff began to call the contestants for the men's 100-meter final, Su Yu stood up calmly and followed the staff's instructions to the starting line of the men's 100-meter track.
At this time, the men's high jump finalists, not far from the 100-meter track, had gathered in the high jump preparation area under the guidance of the high jump administrator and referee.
When Su Yu turned around, he happened to see Jiang Yuan in the preparation area looking in his direction, and seemed to be saying "Come on" to him from a distance.
Before looking away, Su Yu's eyes accidentally swept over Pei Dingshan who was sitting in the coaching area of the audience seats behind the high jump arena.
At this moment, Su Yu remembered what Pei Dingshan said to him when he met him after lunch break.
"Su Yu, remember your body's memory during every training session."
“Remember your own body’s limits.”
"I hope to see you push your physical abilities to the limit in today's game."
"Finally, if necessary, break it."
Break it down…
Breaking your own limits?
If other people heard the conversation between Pei Dingshan and Su Yu, they would probably think that both coaches and players were crazy.
Is it so easy to find a player’s physical limit?
Is it so easy and perfect for a player to apply his physical limit to the competition?
If all these can be done easily, there is no need to discuss the players' competitive state. We can just assume that every player can perfectly perform to their limit in the game.
In short, this was definitely a very unreasonable conversation, but the person who said it was serious, and the person who listened was just as serious.
Because in the past month of training, Pei Dingshan was indeed constantly letting Su Yu feel his physical condition and find out his physical limits. Due to Su Yu's weak physical condition, the two of them needed to analyze through repeated attempts what state was the most suitable training state for him, and what training intensity could produce enough training stimulation for him.
Through repeated training, exploring his own physical fitness and strength has become Su Yu's instinct.
In the next game, all he needs to do is to perfectly demonstrate the physical limits he has mastered in the game.
At this moment, Su Yu was looking at Pei Dingshan in the audience seats of the coaching area in the distance - this guy who always held him to the most stringent standards during training was now sitting upright in the audience seats, looking calmly and silently in his direction, his expression calm as if without any worry or doubt.
After taking a last look in the direction of Pei Dingshan, Su Yu retracted his gaze.
He set his sights on the finish line in front of him - that was the end of the 100-meter track and the direction he was about to sprint.
Plop, plop.
The familiar sound of violent heartbeats once again rang in Su Yu's ears, and the casual conversations in the coach's room at noon also faintly emerged in his ears.
——Su Yu and Zhou Yuang? There is probably no hope for these two children.
——Coach Wang, you should think about how to allocate the quota.
——Yes, Zhou Yuang might be okay, but Su Yu’s chances are indeed slim.
These people may be right, but so what?
No matter what everyone else thinks, at this moment, Su Yu just wants to do his best on this track.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Ye Minghao, Jiang Ruohui or Zhou Yuang in front of him.
He wanted to run, he wanted to win - even if he failed this time, there would always be next time.
Listening to the noisy sounds around him turning into silence and the calls of the on-site staff, Su Yu, standing in front of the starting line, calmly adjusted the starting blocks in front of him. He didn't even notice the voice of Ye Minghao talking to him on his left.
On the fifth lane, Ye Minghao originally wanted to say "come on" to his future opponent on the right, but when he found that there was no response when he called out to him, he was just slightly stunned and then withdrew his attention.
—Were you nervous so you didn’t hear it?
With such doubts, Ye Minghao actually felt a little regretful about his conclusion.
Unfortunately, it may be difficult for the opponent that you favor to have a very outstanding performance in the final stage.
But after such a brief feeling of regret, Ye Minghao turned his attention to the game in front of him - after all, in today's game, he was going to try to break the record!
After Ye Minghao was ready, the boy on his right who "didn't hear his voice because he was nervous" also stood up at this moment.
It's about to start.
Plop, plop.
At this moment, it seemed that it was not just his own heartbeat. In Su Yu's ears, there seemed to be more heartbeats and breathing sounds at different rhythms.
Immediately afterwards, the referee on the scene finally gave the order that represented the official start of the game - everyone take your positions!
At this moment, the highly anticipated U16 National Track and Field Base Competition men's 100m final is about to begin!
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