In the competition plan list released by the official Weibo account of the National Track and Field Team on April 1, the most eye-catching name is naturally Chen Zhi, who has not participated in any competition since he began to adjust his skills in the first half of last year.
From the initial technical adjustments to the subsequent injuries, surgeries and a series of other events, Chen Zhi, who had previously been the number one male sprinter in China, has been silent for a whole year.
This time, after it was confirmed that he would officially return to the competition, his competition plan naturally attracted attention from all parties at the first time.
According to the competition schedule released by the official Weibo account of the national track and field team, Chen Zhi will participate in two major domestic competitions starting from April 4. At the same time, he will travel to Brazil at the end of the month to participate in the IAAF World Challenge Brazil race held in Brazil, and then go to Jamaica and other countries to continue to participate in related competitions.
The purpose of the schedule arranged by the national track and field team for Chen Zhi is very clear, which is to allow Chen Zhi to gradually warm up and regain his competitive form through the competitions, while striving to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in July through a series of competitions.
After seeing Chen Zhi's intensive competition schedule, track and field enthusiasts were surprised at first, but then they understood the intention of the national team. At the same time, Chen Zhi's ability to withstand such great competition pressure also clearly proved that his own condition has recovered relatively well.
All of this can be said to be exciting good news.
In addition to Chen Zhi, Su Zhe's competition plan is also attracting much attention.
In domestic competitions, the national track and field team also arranged two national track and field grand prix races for Su Zhe, but in terms of schedule, these two races happened to be at different times from those that Chen Zhi participated in, so there was no need for the two to compete against each other in the races.
In addition, Su Zhe barely made it into the top 20 of the IAAF points rankings with the points he earned at the World Championships Challenge, the National Athletics Championships, and the World Athletics Championships last year, becoming the first domestic athlete to qualify for both the IAAF Diamond League men's 100m and 110m hurdles events.
Therefore, at the end of April, after participating in a domestic grand prix race, Su Zhe will go to Country D again to participate in the first Diamond League of the year.
After the official announcement of the schedule, tickets for the first round of the National Track and Field Grand Prix held in City Z on April 4 and the second round of the National Track and Field Grand Prix held in City H on April 12 were quickly snapped up.
Since last year's National Track and Field Championships, Su Zhe has participated in most of the competitions abroad. A large number of domestic "philosophers" and simple track and field fans have long been eager to watch Su Zhe's domestic competitions.
As for the first race that Chen Zhi participated in, his track and field fans were eager to go to the scene to support Chen Zhi in his first race after his return from injury.
On the night when the schedule was announced, many forum members in the track and field kingdom who were a step slower were confused.
Subject: [??? There are no tickets now??? This is not how it works? There were always plenty of remaining tickets before???]
In the topic post of this thread, the poster expressed his grief and anger.
[Brothers, I'm a little busy with work today, but in previous years, there were always tickets available even on the day of the game, right? ? ? What's going on this year? It's ok that the tickets for the 4th are sold out, but the tickets for the 12th are also sold out? ? ? ]
Perhaps there were quite a lot of people who failed to get tickets this year, and a group of unlucky friends who failed to get tickets quickly gathered in this building.
1L: [Who isn't? I'm thinking that our previous national grand prix races have never been so popular, right? Aren't most of the tickets released by the organizers given away as free tickets in the end?]
3L: [Forget about that. For these two tournaments, I saw a lot of tickets left two days ago. At that time, I was still hesitating whether to buy a ticket. After all, they were tournaments in other places. The rosters hadn’t been announced yet, and there were no players I particularly supported. I felt a little disappointed to go to the venue to watch... Now I want to go back and slap myself in the face! ]
5L: [I want to slap myself in the face too... I'm a local from City Z, and I was planning to go watch the game, but according to my previous habit, I bought tickets one or two days before the game, and there was no problem anyway. But this afternoon, when I saw the schedule announced by the national team, I was shocked and thought it was over. Sure enough, when I went to buy the tickets, they were already sold out! ]
9L: [Hahahaha, brothers in the room, you guys better be careful. Look at these two races. One is Chen Da Shen's first race after his return. Who wouldn't want to watch it? The other is Zhe Shao's first 100-meter race of the year. You want to watch it, but don't others want to? Besides, with Zhe Shao's popularity, how many people said that their daughters and wives would go to watch the show together? And there are all those young girl fans of Zhe Shao. If you add them together, how slow are you? Can you still get tickets?]
10L: [Big brother on the 9th floor, you are so obviously showing off your winning face after getting the tickets. You will be beaten up in our forum! Oh, forget it. I promised my wife that I would take her to watch Zhe Shao’s game. Now all the tickets are sold out. I don’t know how to explain to my wife. Zhe Shao will fly abroad to participate in the Diamond League and Challenge Tournament. There are only a few rounds left for domestic games... I am now waiting for the ticket sales for the Grand Prix in L City. At least I can get a ticket and take my wife to watch Zhe Shao live.]
Unlike many of the Athletics Kingdom’s forum members who were defeated, Su Zhe’s super topic was filled with cheers and excitement at the moment.
As mentioned in the Athletics Kingdom forum, Su Zhe now mainly participates in international competitions. In domestic competitions, he will only selectively participate in a small number of domestic competitions based on various reasons such as the need to adjust his condition or accumulate domestic track and field points.
Therefore, there are not many chances to see Su Zhe in domestic competitions.
As fan girls with rich experience in ticket grabbing, the "philosophers" must be organized and disciplined when grabbing tickets, which is much smoother. At this time, many philosophers who have grabbed tickets are also discussing in the super chat how to support Su Zhe.
On April 4, the first race to start was the first stop of the National Track and Field Grand Prix, the Z City race.
After a year, Chen Zhi returned to the competition field. Even he felt a little complicated and emotional.
The weather was not good that day. It was drizzling, but fortunately the rain was not heavy and did not have much impact on the players.
In the grandstand area, the audience was located right under the rain shelter, so they were less affected by the rain. However, many people were discussing with their friends: This was the first game for Chen Da Shen after his return, would the rain affect his performance?
While people were discussing and waiting, Chen Zhi walked into the stadium wearing sportswear.
The moment he appeared, there was enthusiastic applause from the audience.
Competing with Chen Zhi this time were 41 male 100m athletes from all over the country.
A total of 42 players were divided into 5 groups, two of which will have 9 players competing at the same time.
The schedule of the Grand Prix is relatively tight, and there are no rematches. After the preliminaries at 9 a.m., the ranking will be determined based on the total preliminaries scores of all participating athletes. The top 8 athletes will directly enter the men's 100m final at 4 p.m.
In the morning competition, Chen Zhi was assigned to the fourth group. When he came on stage, the audience, referees and even players turned their attention to him.
How will this country's sprint king fare in his first race after his return?
Around Chen Zhi, there were also some players who had the idea of "defeating Chen Zhi and becoming famous nationwide", and they were estimating in their hearts how Chen Zhi would recover this time.
Soon, all the speculations were drowned by Chen Zhi's absolute strength after the starting gun was fired.
From the start, Chen Zhi hadn't even shown his strongest condition, but in the first 40 meters, he had already left the other runners behind by at least one body length.
In the mid-run stage and even in the final sprint stage, no one could shake Chen Zhi's leading position. When he was about to reach the finish line, Chen Zhi did not even deliberately lean forward to press the finish line, but ran straight across the finish line.
After Chen Zhi crossed the line, the players behind him crossed the finish line one after another.
According to the final statistics of the preliminary results, Chen Zhi's result was only 10.31 seconds, with a wind speed of -1.3. But even with this result, it was enough to win the first place in the preliminary of this race, and opened up a huge gap of 0.2 seconds from the second place player's 10.51 seconds.
In the audience, many spectators cheered for Chen Zhi, but were inevitably disappointed with the results of other athletes. However, these spectators also understood that, as of now, there are only six athletes in the country who have actually run under 10.20 seconds. Apart from these six athletes, there are only a few remaining athletes who have the ability to break 10.30 seconds.
In public discussions, people have always known that in the 110-meter hurdles, there has been a serious talent gap since Song Chen, and in the men's 100-meter sprint, the talent gap is also extremely fatal.
After seeing the statistics of the preliminary results, Chen Zhi did not show any happiness about his results. After carefully looking at the results of the 2nd to 42nd place players, he sighed alone in the corner.
If we ask why he was always nervous and dared not relax for a moment before Su Zhe appeared, the current shortage of sprinting talents in China was one of the important reasons.
Before this, if he fell, the country would face the situation of having no place in the men's 100m events in various international competitions, or relying on some quota allocated by the IAAF to participate in the competition and then being eliminated in the first round.
Fortunately, after the emergence of Su Zhe, the pressure on his shoulders is now much less. Coupled with the addition of Zhao Zhixuan, who also has extraordinary potential, it can be said that domestic men's sprinting is gradually no longer short of top talents.
However, the gap in strength between the top echelons and the ordinary echelons of domestic athletes cannot be ignored.
That afternoon, the drizzle in City Z had gradually stopped. Although the sky was still overcast, at least the rain had stopped.
After readjusting his condition, Chen Zhi finally stopped holding back in the afternoon race. Instead, he ran with the most serious attitude on the track, leaving the competition in the dust.
In the audience seats, the audience who had been waiting for a long time were naturally very excited about this. Everyone was blowing their whistles, and some were waving Chen Zhi's cheering flags. Everyone was cheering for Chen Zhi together.
"Master Chen, come on!!!"
Accompanied by the enthusiastic cheers of the audience, Chen Zhiyi surpassed the second place by 3 positions in posture and speed and was the first to cross the finish line.
At the same time, the electronic timer at the finish line showed the score of the first athlete when he crossed the line - 10.16 seconds, wind speed -0.6.
"Master Chen is awesome!!"
Although this result is not worth mentioning considering Chen Zhi's previous condition, it is already a good number as his first game after returning from injury.
After all, the audience also knows that for Chen Zhi, today's game is more important for training and warm-up than the final result.
As the audience guessed, Chen Zhi did not think too much about this result. After seeing his final result, he just nodded slightly, then smiled and said goodbye seriously to the audience who came to the scene to support him, and then left the stage first.
On that day, many sports celebrities posted the men's 100-meter results of the first leg of the grand prix, and announced in an excited tone that Chen Zhi, the king, had returned with his style unchanged.
As Chen Zhi finished the first stop of the grand prix, he also finished his trip to City Z and headed to City Y to train his soldiers in preparation for the third stop of the grand prix.
On April 12, Su Zhe had already arrived in L City. His first men's 100-meter race and 110-meter hurdles race of the year were about to begin here.
Coming to the competition with him this time are Zhao Zhixuan and Zheng Jian. After going to the national team for training, Su Zhe, Zhao Zhixuan and Zheng Jian have not seen each other for a long time. This time, Zheng Jian also came to the competition as a member of the S Province Sports Team.
Compared to the first race on April 4, the number of participants in this round of sub-races is equally large. Among them, many players just finished participating in the sub-race in Z City last week and immediately rushed to L City.
For ordinary players, the Grand Prix races are not only a training and achievement competition, but also a good opportunity to gain domestic points, improve their domestic ranking, and participate in higher-level competitions.
With the results of Su Zhe and Zhao Zhixuan, they naturally don't need to pay attention to things like scoring points. Even Zheng Jian, as a disciple of Su Yinsheng, although he has not yet run under 10.20 seconds, he is also one of the few athletes in the country who has the ability to run under 10.30 seconds.
The schedule of the L City race on the 12th was almost the same as that of the Z City race. At 9 a.m., Su Zhe, Zhao Zhixuan and Zheng Jian were assigned to different groups and began to participate in their respective preliminaries.
In the audience seats, a strange sight appeared today - there was a smaller audience area, which was full of girls. They held banners with Su Zhe's cartoon image, Q-version hand cards, cheering flags and a full set of cheering items in their hands, and of course whistles around their necks. Some girls also held cameras in their hands, with a serious look on their faces, obviously intending to take pictures of the game.
As for the straight male sports fans around, today they often bring their girlfriends, sisters, or even daughters with them, and it is a rare occasion for the whole family to come to the game to watch it together.
Compared to the past when the audience area was mostly occupied by men, today the entire stand looked a little pink.
In the stands today, the number of girls almost reached 50%. I don't know if this will be the case in the future, but it can definitely be called an unprecedented ratio of men to women, which made many straight male fans at the scene couldn't help but sigh in the forum.
At about 9:15, the athletes from the second preliminary group, including Su Zhe, stepped onto the field together.
For Su Zhe now, there is no doubt that he will win the final spot of the grand prix. The other players on the field also know that the match with Su Zhe is just a matter of how much Su Zhe will win over them.
Just as everyone expected, after the starting gun sounded, Su Zhe took the first place in the group with absolute advantage and never gave up this position again.
It has been a long time since Su Zhe last ran a 100-meter race in a formal competition since the World Championships. Therefore, even though there were no strong opponents in today's competition, he was still a little excited.
This excited state made him run easily and freely throughout the race.
His absolute speed advantage made him feel like he was running on an empty track. When he entered the last 30 meters of the sprint, he completed his sprint seriously, leaving the athletes behind him far behind.
Although the audience in the audience area had already expected this to be a one-sided victory, many of them still gasped in surprise when they saw the gap between the top international players and the ordinary domestic players on the spot.
In the end, Su Zhe stood far ahead with a preliminary score of 10.12 (0.3), but in today's preliminaries, the gap between him and the second place Zhao Zhixuan was not as exaggerated as the gap between him and Chen Zhi in the previous race.
In the preliminaries, Zhao Zhixuan and Zheng Jian won the second and third places with scores of 10.26 (0.5) and 10.33 (0.4) respectively.
After finishing the men's 100m preliminaries, Su Zhe simply took a rest and then returned to the competition venue again. This time, he stood on the field as a 110m hurdles athlete.
Different from the four matches in one day in the national championships where he had given his all, for Su Zhe now, in this grand prix race, he really only needs to show his practiced condition to win first place. For him, practice and warm-up mean far more to him in this competition.
Amid the enthusiastic cheers of the audience, Su Zhe won the first place in the 110-meter hurdles preliminaries with ease and a healthy posture. His final result in the preliminaries was 13.45 seconds (0.6), while the second-place athlete's result was 14.46 seconds, which was beyond Su Zhe's expectation, with a gap of more than 1 second from his result.
For 110-meter hurdlers, the difference in performance on the field is more than 1 second, and the difference in strength can only be described as heaven and earth.
After seeing the results of the remaining players, Su Zhe also frowned, and the word "responsibility" that Chen Zhi had often mentioned suddenly flashed through his mind. He suddenly realized that although he, Zhou Tianjue and Ye Jun had reached the world's top level, this was by no means the average level of domestic athletes.
There is still a long way to go in China to improve the basic strength of all athletes in track and field events.
In the men's 100m and 110m hurdles finals in the afternoon, Su Zhe also easily won first place in both finals with scores of 10.09 (1.0) and 13.30 (1.2).
In the audience seats, all the spectators who came to watch the game exclaimed that they had a great time.
Seeing Su Zhe compete live, especially as he now thrives in domestic competitions, is an easy and enjoyable spectator event for his supporters.
Naturally, sports celebrities would not let go of this topic, and someone posted a report on Weibo that day titled "Su Zhe sweeps the L City leg of the National Grand Prix."
Some exaggerated online media even started to describe Su Zhe's victory in the race with headlines like "Dugu seeks defeat, he has no rivals in the country."
On the forum of the track and field kingdom, the discussions among sports enthusiasts were much more rational. After all, judging from Su Zhe's performance this time and the fact that he did not seem too tired despite running four races in one day, it can be seen that Su Zhe did not show any real strength in this race.
Uncle Eyes: [Currently, Chen Zhi, Su Zhe, Zhou Tianjue, Ye Jun and other players are already world-class players. It would be a waste of talent to let them continue to participate in domestic competitions. It’s okay to use them as practice matches and warm-ups occasionally, but if they participate in more games, it might be harmful to them.]
Many forum users supported the statement made by the man with eyes. They dug out the national team's schedule and, based on the blank spaces on the schedule, began to speculate on the national team's next arrangements for these top players.
In fact, everyone's guess was correct.
In the schedule announced on April 1, both Chen Zhi and Su Zhe have a series of European training matches that have been planned but have not yet been included in the plan. In their corresponding competition cycles, these competitions are temporarily presented as "undetermined" or "in training".
Participating in the European training match was a decision made by Su Yinsheng after communicating with Chen Zhi's foreign coach Taylor Wei some time ago.
Whether it is Chen Zhi or Su Zhe, if they want to further improve their personal level, they certainly cannot spend too much time and energy on ordinary domestic competitions.
Compared to Su Yinsheng's initial idea of retaining more domestic competitions, Taylorway was more resolute in its decision to allow Chen Zhi and Su Zhe to go directly to the European training base for training and participate in the European training matches.
Taylor Wei believes that whether it is Chen Zhi, Su Zhe, or even Zhou Tianjue, Ye Jun, Zhao Zhixuan and others, they should not devote too much energy to ordinary domestic competitions.
"An athlete should participate more in competitions that suit his personal level, rather than wasting too much time on ordinary competitions. It makes no sense to let him sweep the field in competitions of this level!"
Taylor Wei's words made a lot of sense. After a little consideration, Su Yinsheng no longer considered the domestic points rules and other matters, and instead focused on improving the performance and status of Chen Zhi, Su Zhe and others.
After the relevant decision was made, the official plan for the European training competition was submitted to the national team and the Athletics Management Center, and the plan was quickly approved.
In late April, with the support of the national team, members of the sprint and hurdle groups set out on a journey to Europe.
The author has something to say: Ahhhh, I hold my head, QAQ Sorry, I don't have time to post comments + big guys + reviews tonight, the network at home is twitching, I almost can't post
Kneel down, hoping to send it out smoothly...
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