Xinhua News Agency, Hohhot, February 20th: quick skating girl
on the roller coaster ice rink, Xinhua News Agency reporter Wei Yuyu and Wang Chunyan
12-year-old Dolan, in the short track speed skating field, it is like a “small butterfly”. She deftly surpassed her opponent in the curve and accelerated neatly in the straight road. Finally, she rushed to the end with a light attitude and easily won the women’s 1000 m champion in the short track speed skating C Group of the second Winter Games in Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The off-site audience gave her warm applause again. She had already won the women’s 500 m and 1500 m championships in Group C.
After winning the game, Dolan reluctantly slipped on the ice rink for a while before he ended up. “The ice here is really comfortable to slide, just like driving on the highway, which can accelerate at any time, while skating on the ice rink in our hometown is as bumpy as riding a roller coaster.” Doran joked.
“Roller coaster ice rink” is located on Xilin Lake, Xilin haote city, Inner Mongolia. This outdoor ice rink is the main training ground for local speed skating and short track speed skating athletes.
Every morning at 6 o’clock, the ice rink staff drove the homemade pouring ice wagon to start pouring ice. Pouring ice wagon is actually an agricultural tricycle, behind which a large water barrel can leak at the bottom is pulled, and a piece of vinyl leather is hung on the bucket, which can make the newly poured ice face brush flat.
There are many uneven places on the ice that has been poured like this. Even though the ice rink was hard, there were still more than 20 young athletes aged 5 to 14 training here at 9 a.m. every day during the winter vacation.
37-year-old Jia wanchao is the coach of the speed skating team of Xilinguole League. The former champion of speed skating in Inner Mongolia autonomous region now focuses on popularizing skating to teenagers.
After gathering at 9 o’clock, Jia wanchao led the team members to finish the warm-up exercise and quickly started the training on that day. During the winter vacation, the daily ice training time is only 2 hours in the morning. At noon, citizens will go skating here one after another. At that time, Jia wanchao can only lead the team members to conduct physical training.
Older players such as Dolan glide on the track, practicing speed and endurance, while younger players learn basic movements in the middle of the field. Jia Wen Chaoyi answered the questions of the players in the middle of the field, and shouted for technical guidance to the players sliding in the outer circle for a while. His voice was blown away by the howling wind.
In winter, the temperature reaches minus 30 degrees Celsius, often blowing 6 winds. The orchid trained in the outdoor ice rink is difficult to resist the biting cold wind even when wearing down jacket. “When the wind is strong, the children can’t bend down when they slide against the wind, and down jacket of them are blown up.” Jia Wenchao said.
In spite of this, the little players who love skating are still firmly chasing their dreams here. It mainly focuses on long-distance Dolan, and often trains itself to continuously slide 100 rounds to exercise endurance. “After sliding to more than 50 rounds, I started to turn black in front of my eyes. I felt that I could no longer open my eyes when I closed my eyes. I thought that this group would never slip after sliding. Stick to the 80th circle, thinking that the fight will be over. After the fight, I will not feel tired. Wait until the next training, I am still willing to slide another 100 rounds.”
Duolan was selected into the autonomous region team in 2018 because of outstanding achievements and participated in the national U series. When asked about the results of the competition, Doran said shyly, “I didn’t get a good ranking. There are too many strong players everywhere.” Then she added seriously: “skating was happy when I was a child. Now I can’t just think about happiness, but I have to constantly surpass myself. I believe I can also skate well in the future.”
On the “roller coaster ice rink” in Xilin Lake, Li Xiang, a junior high school student who participated in the 13th National Winter Games, now Dolan is working hard to “hear his name on the 14th Winter.