On January 12th, overnight, the Chinese men’s volleyball team and the men’s football team missed the Tokyo Olympic Games one after another, making the collective ball games of the Chinese sports delegation particularly withered. Among the collective ball games that have been clearly qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games, besides the traditional Chinese women’s volleyball team and women’s hockey, there are also the Chinese 7 human made women’s football team regarded as “dark horse. Different from the three big-ball sports with high investment and high attention, the Chinese Rugby project only has the soil of “accumulating poverty and weakness”, but this group of girls who cannot be exposed to the spotlight have trained a “red-tasselled spear”, “Tear a hole in the whole project”. Chen Ying, chairman of the Chinese Rugby Association, felt that there was light.
In the Asian regional qualifier of the Tokyo Olympic Games in November 2019, the Chinese women’s rugby team won the Olympic qualification for the first time human made July, achieving a historical breakthrough in Chinese rugby. Recently, Wang Yi, director of the Summer Olympic Games department of the competition department of the State General Administration of Sports, said at the meeting of the Chinese Rugby Association preparing for the Tokyo Olympic Games and the promotion of substantive reform held in Nanjing, it is necessary to fully understand the value of the Olympic qualification of rugby events in Chinese sports delegations and the significance of milestones in the development history of rugby events, “Chinese rugby starts late, has poor foundation and lacks talents, it is really not easy to break into the Tokyo Olympic Games”.
As a group sport that emphasizes physical confrontation, rugby has developed in China for 20 to 30 years and still lingers on the edge of the minority. “the spiritual core it shows has not been truly known by the public.” Chen yingtu was elected as the chairman of the Chinese Rugby Association in last April. At that time, the team was still striving for the Olympic qualification. On the day of taking office, he said in front of 43 representatives present and Li Yingchuan, deputy director of the State Sports General Administration: “If Chinese women’s rugby can’t qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, I will submit my resignation.” Afterwards, he recalled to the reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Net that in fact, the guarantee of all aspects of the team was not perfect when “packing tickets”. However, if you want to develop Chinese rugby alone, you must fight for an opportunity, “Let the public notice rugby and give us some space again”.
Seven months later, the opportunity will appear, and the minority football will usher in great changes. The dividend of reform has begun to emerge. According to Jia Jipo, the leader of the Chinese women’s football team, the team is currently carrying out training with the famous coach Sean in New Zealand, which has been guaranteed to the greatest extent except clothing, food, housing, transportation and training, the intervention of scientific and technological means also improves the efficiency of preparation. For example, the use of micro-pressure oxygen chamber can accelerate the recovery of athletes from injuries, and the surface friction coefficient of Jersey using nanotechnology is relatively low, it is helpful to reduce the probability that the team members will be caught after breaking through, and it can improve the combat effectiveness of the team. “These are the results of stimulating the introduction of social forces after the entity of the Association, which are of real help to the team members”.
Jia Jipo, a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Net, said that with the advancement of the reform, he hoped that sponsors, competition companies, brokerage companies and investors would join the development of rugby in different ways. When releasing the situation on preparation for Olympic Games, the “competition place” on the PPT stated “Tokyo stadium”, and he added “50000 live audiences, more than 180 countries and regions, and more than 1 billion TV viewers”.
“For the industry, a complete organizational structure and long-term development plan are needed.” Yu Xiaoxiang, an education and training officer of the World Rugby Association in China, was once a rugby player. After the transformation of the coach, he experienced the situation that the reserve talents were not picking up. He was determined to step down from the “pyramid” and promote rugby at the grassroots level from 2017. But he is not facing teenagers, but grass-roots coaches. “only qualified and high-quality educators can attract people and make the project develop healthily. If we blindly seek quantity and do not talk about quality, the foundation of the project will still not be stable “.
Due to historical and cognitive reasons, the Chinese Rugby Association focuses on the development of rugby 7 human made and 15 human made. However, under the influence of American fashion culture, American rugby with extremely high commercial value has been unveiled in China to varying degrees, but in the past, the development of Chinese rugby was insufficient, it does not play a guiding role in cognition for the public. Therefore, the special situation of “Zhang Guanli Dai” generally appears.
“In the past, the association had no spare power to provide guidance and services for other sports forms beyond rugby 7 human made and 15 human made. As a result, it even leads to confusion of cognition in the market. I think the Chinese Rugby Association only cares about the British, while other American, Australian and touch styles are not under our control.” Guo Xianchun, secretary general of the Chinese Rugby Association, said that the year 2019 was not only a year for Chinese rugby to achieve historic achievements in the Olympic battlefield, but also a year for other rugby forms to make major breakthroughs in China.
Take American football as an example, the college American football league was founded in 2019, and private capital has begun to plan to launch the professional American Football League; rugby 13 human made is considering entering the Chinese market with the opportunity of promoting the 2021 World Cup. The Australian rugby game in Shanghai has lasted for many years. Unfortunately, at the annual meeting of the International American Football Federation at the end of last year, representatives from China were not Chinese Football Association, but entrepreneurs who attended as “observers. Guo Xianchun said frankly that since the new leading group of China Rugby Association took office in 2019, he had already felt the force of the market and industry on the association.
In Guo Xianchun’s view, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games is an opportunity for the development of Chinese rugby, and the substantive reform of the association is a starting line not far ahead of the practitioners.
Newspaper, Beijing, January 13,
Zhongqing daily · Zhongqing net reporter Liang Xuan Source: China Youth Daily