The Athens Olympic Stadium, one of the most important venues of the Games, with more than 70,000 spectator seats, was renovated between 2002 and 2004 and was used as the venue for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, track and field competitions and football finals.

On August 19, the Olympic Stadium was lit up at night, with the roof of the stadium, designed by Spanish designer Calatrava, suspended directly above the stadium from the top of the stadium. Lights set in the ceiling light up, making the entire stadium look like daylight.

"Ye Chin, stop!"

On the indoor warm-up track, Yu Weili looked at the teenager who had been warming up since he arrived at the Olympic Stadium, couldn't help but shake his head and smile, and beckoned to stop him.

"Coach, what's wrong?"

Ye Qin stretched out his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, turned his head to look at Yu Weili, and said with some doubts.

After entering the stadium to check in, he started to warm up on the warm-up track, although it was only a preliminary round, but he was more careful and serious than the World Youth Championship finals he had participated in before.

"That's it." Yu Weili walked up to Ye Qin's side, "You have enough time to warm up." ”

"Huh?" Ye Qin glanced at Yu Weili with a slight puzzlement, not to mention that his warm-up before the game was particularly long in the past, but according to the rhythm, it was only about now.

"Rest and get ready to play." Yu Weili shook his head and smiled, "You have training and warm-up during the day today, and now your body is warmed up." ”

Ye Qin took a deep breath, nodded, and turned to look at the check-in area in the distance, there are many athletes, coaches and staff on the indoor warm-up track, but in comparison, the sound from time to time outside the venue is really exciting.

The men's 400m heats start at 9:10 tonight, with a total of 64 competitors in eight preliminary groups.

Similar to the previous three-shot tiebreaker competition, there were three groups with a total of 24 players in the semi-finals, and the promotion rules for the preliminary round were that the top two in the group would advance directly, and then the top eight players with the best results would advance.

Ye Qin was in the fourth group of the preliminaries, and according to the check-in procedure, Ye Qin began to line up with the athletes from the same group after the players in the previous groups of preliminaries finished the competition, waiting to enter the venue.

At 9:25 p.m., after the third group of players in the preliminary round exited, Ye Qin's fourth group of players in the preliminary round crossed the corridor and entered the Olympic Stadium.

The light of the corridor was a little dim, and after a short period of more than ten meters, the eyes suddenly lit up, as if the sky was falling, and the shouts were only faintly audible, and at this time, it seemed to be magnified thousands of times in an instant, like a tide, surging towards people.

Whew-

Standing on the runway, Ye Qin raised his head and took advantage of the light hanging overhead, and looked at the black and oppressive human heads and various flags and slogans around him.

He is the eighth, the one that is close to the edge, but also closer to the spectators and the stands.

Although there were no particularly intense cheers and shouts because it was a preliminary match, as long as it was a small and fragmented speech, it reached the scale of 60,000 or 70,000 people, and the entire stadium could also form a buzzing wave after a wave.

When he walked from the check-in area through the corridor to the runway, Ye Qin felt a little dizzy, excited, nervous, excited, worried, and all kinds of emotions seemed to suddenly swell up in his heart.

This is the Olympics!

I'm standing at the Olympics right now!

Ye Qin looked up, this is a bigger stage than the World Junior Championships, the City Games and the World Youth Championships, and the stage that he dreams of being on as a track and field athlete.

On the day he walked on the track and started practicing sports, he never thought that this day would appear in his life, and he could be so lucky to walk on this stage.

If there is no track, no sports are chosen, where will it be at this moment?

Probably still in Xiushui No. 2 Middle School, maybe I can borrow money from various families through patchwork, and barely continue to go to class, in such a hot summer, with other classmates in school buried in textbooks, eager to be admitted to university, eager to go out of the village, town and county, and be able to fight for a future that is not very clear.

And sports, track and field, sprinting, completely changed the trajectory of his life.

He remembered that in the summer before entering high school, he was still catching loaches in the paddy fields of Shangyun Village, picking snails in the babbling river, moving red bricks that had just come out of the kiln in the brick kiln factory, his grandfather was counting up the tuition for him, his biological father's indifference made him sad and painful, and his grandmother was thinking of a way to cook him more dishes for dinner.

Coach Nie's final explanation to him in the ward of Grosseto Hospital, Ye Qin, don't let down the runway.

He Jun pinned his Olympic gold medal dream on him at the rehabilitation center.

The girl who grew up together as a teenager kept shouting at him behind him, "Ye Chin, come on!" ”

Yan Ning talked to him about his career in the playground of the school, and talked about how sports can change lives.

His original life trajectory should be similar to that of other teenagers who go to school in rural areas, his grades are not counted, maybe he can go to a junior college if he works hard, he is lucky enough to go to a second year, and he may be able to successfully complete his studies through work-study after entering school.

He may leave school and go north or south with his friends or neighbors in the same village to start working in a foreign country, or work hard in a construction site, live in a small factory to learn some technology, or be a small security guard, or something else......

Ye Qin couldn't predict which path he would take, but he had seen the people around him, those from the same background as him, from teenagers to young adults, probably always like that.

There was only this runway, and it was an unlikely path in his original life trajectory.

From the school sports meeting to the municipal middle school sports meeting to the provincial youth championship...... That's how he seems to have come all the way.

No matter whether he is cold or hot, no matter what time and place, no matter what kind of environment he is facing, he has been training hard and running hard!

And now, he's in the Olympics!

I can endure the pain because I have more power than the pain!

The lights in the Olympic Stadium were staggered, the noise and noise in the spectator seats seemed to boil like water, and there were more cameras and cameras on the sidelines than he could count, all eyes on the stadium at this moment.

Ye Qin leaned down, gently kissed the rough plastic runway, and stood up again, his eyes burning and seemed to be burning.

He had never entered a sports school before, he had not entered a professional team, and he had never even thought that he would choose the path of competitive sports.

On the field, he has the pursuit of championships, the unwillingness to lag behind others, and the desire to compete with top masters.

But the word Olympics, he used to just talk about it with Nie Fangping by chance, and occasionally had a little hope, but these things seemed to be as far away from him as the stars in the sky.

And now, here I am!

I'm in the Olympics.

It seemed that all the emotions gradually converged into one thought in an instant.

Just run, Yechin!

“On your marks！”

On the sidelines, the sound of reminding players to take their positions sounded.

Ye Qin calmed his breath, lowered his head and was silent, and stepped on the runner!