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The La Défense Stadium, which used to cheer every night, has returned to calm. The nine-day Paris Olympic swimming competition has finally come to an end. The Chinese swimming team has ended this story-filled journey with two gold medals, three silver medals, seven bronze medals and a world record. Due to various reasons, this team, which was called "the strongest Chinese swimming team in history" before the competition, failed to break the best record of winning five gold medals in the 2012 London Olympics, nor did it exceed the three gold medals in the Tokyo Olympics, but the two gold medals are of extremely high gold content, and the total number of medals is also the highest in history.

As Xu Jiayu, a four-time Olympic veteran, said after winning his first Olympic gold medal: "Competition is like fighting a war. Overcoming all difficulties is something that is engraved in the bones of the Chinese people." Ignoring the noise outside the field, they won the respect of their opponents and the support of swimming fans around the world with their strength and courage, playing the "strongest sound of the Olympics" of never giving up. This is also a vivid interpretation of the Olympic spirit.

Strong rebound, "If luck doesn't work, try courage"

During the Paris Olympics, the Chinese swimming team, which had been attacked before the games, actively cooperated with frequent doping tests, but was still targeted by some Western media. The athletes were burdened with a heavy psychological burden, and many main players suffered physical discomfort. The unfavorable start and the failure to win the gold medal did not crush them. The swimmers went against the current and became more courageous with each setback.

"When luck is not on your side, try your courage." This is how Cui Dengrong, the gold medal coach of Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang, encouraged the players.

With this "Chinese people's innate" spirit of not giving up and not accepting fate, Zhang Yufei fought despite illness, Pan Zhanle won the gold medal, Xu Jiayu became stronger with age, and Qin Haiyang became braver after knowing shame... The whole team was inspired with great fighting spirit in the face of adversity.

In the men's 4x100m medley relay final, Xu Jiayu, Qin Haiyang, Sun Jiajun and Pan Zhanle beat the US team to win the gold medal. Xinhua News Agency photo

"Fight for the country and realize the dream, come on the Chinese swimming team, the Chinese swimming team will win!" Before the men's 4x100m medley relay final on the evening of the 4th, deafening cheers came from the Chinese team's rest area. In the competition, the four "dragons" Xu Jiayu, Qin Haiyang, Sun Jiajun and Pan Zhanle really won the victory with "the greatest determination, the most firm will and the most tenacious struggle".

After the men's medley relay won the gold medal, young coaches Cai Li, Zheng Kunliang and veteran gold medal coaches Cui Dengrong, Wang Aimin and others all had tears in their eyes.

"Thanks to the encouragement and help from my coach and everyone in the team, I am back. There is still a long way to go to become the real 'frog king', and I will continue to walk down to earth. I believe that Chinese swimming will definitely get better!" Qin Haiyang said after the game. In just a few days, from being full of confidence and determined to win before the game, to having a heavy burden and poor performance in the individual competition, to competing in the relay race with teammates to create history, the "triple crown" of the World Championships has experienced the difficulty of hell.

Judging from the final results, the Chinese swimming team won 12 medals, the most in history. In particular, they broke the 40-year monopoly of the American team and won the men's 4X100m medley relay gold medal for the first time, proving the correct thinking of Chinese swimming in the past two years of preparation - "promoting unity through relay, promoting cohesion through unity, strengthening training through cohesion, strengthening individual events through training, and strengthening relays through individual events".

The establishment of 7 relay events in the Olympics and more relay events in the World Championships has promoted more local teams in China to promote the development of individual events with the enthusiasm of everyone's participation. The domestic swimming landscape is becoming more and more broad, and there are more and more young talents, which has improved the overall strength of Chinese swimming. Among the 31 swimming names in the Paris Olympics, Zhejiang occupies 9 seats, and 7 people are on the podium; the Hebei Taihua Swimming Team led by Li Bingjie has also emerged with a large number of new generation forces in middle and long distance freestyle; traditional strong swimming provinces such as Hubei, Shanghai, and Guangdong are gradually radiating outward, and more and more provinces have athletes emerging.

The Chinese swimming team also set up a relay selection mechanism in advance. After the National Championships in April, it accurately determined the order and candidates for each baton in the preliminaries and finals, allowing athletes to practice the baton starting, turning and reaching the side techniques in advance, improving the success rate and speed, and avoiding the mistakes of fouls that occurred in previous baton exchanges.

The Chinese team did it. Although there were regrets, the breakthroughs and surprises were more brilliant. The courage and confidence to rise up in adversity were more precious than the gold medal.

Pulling teeth out of a tiger's mouth, crushing doubts with strength

In Paris, the water in the La Défense swimming pool is not calm.

Before and after the Olympics, some foreign media have been using the food contamination incident three years ago as an excuse to continuously attack and slander the Chinese swimming team. Due to external interference, the Chinese swimming team failed to win gold in the few days before the start of the competition.

On July 31, in the competition among many top swimmers in the men's 100m freestyle, Pan Zhanle, who "held his breath", broke through the pressure and won the championship with a time of 46.40 seconds, breaking his own world record and clearing the haze for the Chinese swimming team.

He significantly improved the world record by 0.4 seconds and was 1.08 seconds ahead of the runner-up, winning heartily. Although some sour people began to question "non-human" and "impossible", Pan Zhanle won the respect of his opponents. The runner-up, Australian star Chalmers, the third place, Romanian genius Popovic, and British male short-distance freestyle swimmer Proud all supported Pan Zhanle. Popovic said: "We should congratulate him. Human beings always break through the limits, it just takes the right opportunity with the right time, place and people."

A few days later, on the last day of the swimming competition and Pan Zhanle's birthday, he teamed up with his teammates Xu Jiayu, Qin Haiyang and Sun Jiajun to once again make a big move. In the men's 4x100m medley relay, they broke the 40-year monopoly of the US team and won the first Olympic gold medal for the Chinese team.

This event has always been the "territory" of the American team. Since the event was included in the Olympics in 1960, the American team has won all 15 times except for the 1980 Olympics where it did not participate. Since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the best result of the Chinese team in history was the eighth place in the Tokyo Olympics. But in the final, Xu Jiayu (backstroke), Qin Haiyang (breaststroke), and Pan Zhanle (freestyle) all fought their best in their respective swimming styles. Sun Jiajun temporarily replaced Wang Changhao, the number one candidate for butterfly stroke. He withstood the pressure in the third leg and did his best to leave room for Pan Zhanle to overtake in the last leg.

This was a day that witnessed Chinese swimming's courage to break through and give it a go. It also happened to be Pan Zhanle's 20th birthday, who was participating in the Olympics for the first time. In the last freestyle of the men's mixed relay, he swam a segment score of 45.92 seconds, and his pre-race boast of "swimming under 46 seconds" came true! Moreover, including the reaction time of the start, it was faster than his winning score in the 100-meter freestyle event. "Records are meant to be broken," Pan Zhanle said after the game.

When taking a group photo at the award ceremony, the American team, convinced of defeat, took the initiative to signal the champion Chinese team to "stand on top" and sat down with the French team. Afterwards, the players shook hands and hugged each other in a friendly manner. When foreign media tried to bring up the so-called "doping" topic again after the game, American team member Murphy said: "Salute to the Chinese team, they swam a great game."

Breaking through the haze, the Olympic spirit shines the brightest at this moment.

In addition to the gold medal, win the hearts of the people with reason and moderation

At the age of 30, Wang Shun has become the only athlete in Chinese swimming history to win medals in the same event three times in a row after four Olympic Games. In the men's 200m individual medley event, he won bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics, gold at the Tokyo Olympics, and bronze again at the Paris Olympics.

From the "dual core era" dominated by Phelps and Lochte to the current era dominated by French "Flying Fish" Marchand, Wang Shun has always been fighting. His 1 gold and 2 bronze medals in four Olympic Games are enough to be recorded in the history of Chinese swimming.

After winning the bronze medal, he calmly responded to another criticism from foreign media: "Chinese athletes insist on winning clean gold medals, gold medals with style and gold medals with morality. I underwent 28 irregular tests from the end of the domestic trials in May to the Olympics. Including 11 tests in more than two weeks from July 5 to the Olympic Games. These are enough to prove that we (have no problems)."

Zhang Yufei was a little unwilling to accept the result after winning 1 silver and 5 bronze medals in all 6 events. "It's a lot of medals, but not the color I want." But she has made history, raising the record of Chinese swimmers' individual Olympic medals to 10. And this achievement was achieved by this "model worker in the pool" who overcame physical discomforts such as menstrual period and fever.

Zhang Yufei, who has been on the podium for 6 times, always wears a panda hair accessory or a dragon horn hairpin, and always shows a confident and bright smile. She said: "Life is a mirror. If you smile at it, it will smile at you; if you cry at it, it will cry at you too."

This smiling girl from Jiangsu Province responded sharply but politely to foreign media's doubts about Pan Zhanle's performance at the press conference: "Whether he used drugs or not, doping tests can give clear results. Why should Chinese athletes be questioned when they swim fast? When American athlete Phelps won 8 gold medals, why did no one dare to question him?" The Chinese girl's impressive demeanor and well-reasoned rhetorical questions quickly won her a following among international netizens.

The self-proclaimed "expert" Australian coach Hawke was also refuted and ridiculed by countless righteous netizens around the world after he posted a video questioning Pan Zhanle's "impossible" performance. One netizen commented: "An athlete from a non-English speaking country beat an Australian swimmer, and it was linked to 'banned drugs'." Another netizen said: "World records are meant to be broken."

Under criticism from a large number of foreign swimming fans, this Australian "King of Understanding" has quietly deleted the video.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)

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