"I don't want to put pressure on you, but I have to tell you one thing – this year's competition is not a good one."

In Zhang Dongcheng's room, Zhang Dongcheng and Pei Jing and the six contestants revisited this year's situation.

"This year's World Junior Championships has a record number of teams and numbers."

In the previous two years, the men's 1500m individual event was an example, the number of participants in the first two sessions was small, although the 01 World Youth Championships was divided into 14 preliminary groups, but each group was only 5 people, and 42 players were selected in the quarterfinals, with a promotion rate of more than 50%.

In the 02 World Youth Championships, there were only 10 preliminary groups, with 6 players in each group, and 30 players were selected for the quarterfinals, and the promotion rate also reached 50%.

This year's men's 1500m group competition has 15 groups of 6 people in each group, with a total of 90 competitors, while this year's quarterfinals only take the top two in each group, and then take the top 6 from the remaining players, a total of 36 people advance to the quarterfinals.

It can be said that starting from 1500 meters, the difficulty of qualifying for this year's World Youth Championships is much higher than in previous years.

This is bound to have an impact on the contestants.

Many of the players who were expecting to advance to at least the quarter-finals are likely to be knocked out in large numbers in the group qualifiers this time.

Although of course, these players of the Chinese team cannot just go to the goal of the quarterfinals, but the current signing order has not yet come out, if they are unlucky to meet any difficult opponents in the group stage, it is entirely possible to encounter a promotion crisis in the preliminary stage.

Zhang Dongcheng and Pei Jing are for this reason, especially to take a preventive shot with each contestant in advance.

In the past few days, Su Liang and these contestants set off from China to Budapest on the 5th, and after arriving in Budapest, there is no WeChat or Weibo in the current era, and their contact and information with China basically rely on the transmission of coaches and team leaders.

As for the specific number of participants and the list of participants in the World Junior Championships, this is the first time they have heard from them.

After hearing the number of participants and the promotion criteria this time, several players present were also slightly nervous.

As Zhang Dongcheng and Pei Jing thought, of course, these players are not only seeking to advance to the quarterfinals, but the current situation is equivalent to cutting nearly two-thirds of the players in the preliminary stage.

No one can say for sure whether there will be any players with good strength who were eliminated in the preliminaries due to luck.

It's entirely possible - think about it, if a preliminaries group gathers Su Liang, Choi Changxi, and Eliezer, then among the remaining three players, even if Sun Ruixiang is among them, the hope of advancing is slim.

After announcing the information of the 1500m preliminaries of the most difficult World Youth Championships in history with Su Liang and 6 people, Zhang Dongcheng still relieved a few words with the few people present.

"Don't think too much about it, I'll tell you again when the specific group list comes out. The preliminaries will still follow the rules of splitting the players from each country, so at least the good news is that you don't have to worry about facing two South Koreans in the same group. ”

Zhang Dongcheng smiled and said a cold joke, and then encouraged the 6 people present one by one, and said: "In short, relax and maintain a good sense of normalcy to compete, I believe that as long as you give full play to your strength, there will be no problem!" ”

The six people present nodded.

At this time, although Sun Ruixiang and the others were a little nervous, they were not really frightened.

And like Su Liang and Wu Gang, the expressions on their faces did not change from beginning to end, and there was even some eagerness in Su Liang's eyes.

After waiting out of Zhang Dongcheng's room, Sun Ruixiang couldn't help but look at Wu Gang, quietly poked him with his elbow, and asked, "Eh, Wu Gang, there will be a preliminaries tomorrow, aren't you nervous?" ”

Wu Gang glanced at him: "Nervousness is useful?" ”

Sun Ruixiang smiled: "It's useless to be nervous, but it's just nervous!" ”

“……”

Hearing Sun Ruixiang's answer, Wu Gang ignored him anymore, but walked forward with his head buried in himself.

In fact, according to his past character, he would not pay attention to Sun Ruixiang's stupid question at all, and might even scold him, 'You don't ask Su Liang if he is nervous, ask me if he is nervous?' ’。

But I don't know why, when he looked at Su Liang's face recently, he felt a little scolding.

This feeling made him a little irritable, and he simply ignored anyone around him, and prepared to go back to his room to rest and prepare for the next day's competition.

And when he thought of the next day's game, he didn't know why the annoying little bean Ding said to Su Liang before popped up in his mind - "Nuan Nuan is watching TV at home and cheering for my brother." ”

And then there's the milky whirring saying, 'Goodbye brother just now.'" ’

Wu Gang: ......

What a hell of a thing.

He remembered what that little bean was doing.

So when Sun Ruixiang, who was in the same room as Wu Gang, entered the room, he saw Wu Gang sitting alone on the single sofa in the room, with a low air pressure on his face - obviously not in a good mood.

Sun Ruixiang's animal instinct made him obediently instigated at this moment—he always felt that there was some strange difference between Wu Gang at this time and his usual stinky face.

***

Although the amount of training today was relatively small, after watching the acclimatization training of the Canadian team and the South Korean team, it was almost 7 o'clock in the evening when I returned to the hotel room.

Su Liang originally wanted to call home again in the evening, but it was already this o'clock, and it was almost 1 o'clock in the morning in China, so he just thought about it.

In the room, Mu Yuansheng asked with a smile after seeing Su Liang come back, "What did Team Zhang and Coach Pei talk to you about?" Tough tomorrow's race? ”

Su Liang nodded and relayed what Zhang Dongcheng and Pei Jing had just said.

“…… At present, the signing order has not yet been released, and the difficulty of tomorrow's preliminaries depends on the specific signing order grouping. ”

Hearing this, Mu Yuansheng suddenly asked, "Xiao Liang, do you still have it with you?" ”

In Su Liang's puzzled eyes, Mu Yuansheng pulled out a golden square sign worn by a cowhide rope from his neckline.

Su Liang was stunned for a moment, but quickly pulled out the golden lucky card from the collar of his coat.

Mu Yuansheng smiled, in fact, he has lived with Su Liang in the past few days, of course he knows that Su Liang has been wearing this lucky card, so he stood up, came to Su Liang's side, and under Su Liang's somewhat puzzled gaze, he gently touched his lucky card with Su Liang's lucky card.

There was a slight 'ding' sound, which was the sound of two lucky cards colliding.

Looking down at Su Liang, who was a little confused in his eyes, Mu Yuansheng smiled lightly again: "Share my luck with you, tomorrow Xiaoliang's signing order will definitely be the luckiest one." ”

Su Liang looked at him hesitantly as if he was coaxing the child's senior brother, but when he met his senior brother's gentle and smiling eyes, he was silent again, and then followed his senior brother to gently touch the lucky card with the same childishness.

Seeing that Su Liang followed and touched each other's lucky cards with him, Mu Yuansheng really laughed at this time, he rubbed Su Liang's hair: "Okay, the luckiest Xiaoliang, hurry up and clean up, it's time to prepare to rest in a while, reserve your physical strength, tomorrow Senior Brother will watch your game on the field and cheer you on - don't be pressured, you will definitely be the luckiest and best one." ”

Hearing his senior brother's words, Su Liang stayed for a while, and then laughed rarely.

This kind of childishness is like a child's encouragement, which he has not heard for many years, but it does make him feel happy.

So at the urging of his senior brother, he also obediently answered 'yes', and then turned around and went to the bathroom to wash up.

Soon after Su Liang finished washing, the final group list for the men's 1500m came out, and it was indeed as his senior brother said - he was the luckiest one.

In the group of Sun Ruixiang and Wu Gang, although there are no three players from South Korea, there are more or less one or two players with a certain reputation in the group.

In the group that Su Liang drawn, he was the only player with the most popularity, and the rest of the opponents did not have a particularly strong presence in the information collected by the national team.

After seeing Su Liang's grouping, Sun Erxiang immediately expressed envy and cried.

But overall, the Chinese team's luck in signing this time was not bad, and the men's and women's teams did not draw too strong opponents in the group stage.

After receiving the specific group list, after chatting for a while, Su Liang and Mu Yuansheng turned off the headlights in the room, lay down on the bed and fell asleep with good night.

***

The next morning, at about six or seven o'clock, which is also the regular time for Su Liang's biological clock to get up, he opened his eyes on time, and not long after, his senior brother had already woken up, and said good morning to him with a smile across the bed.

And just as Su Liang was about to get up to wash, the mobile phone he put next to the bed suddenly rang, and he glanced at the number of the caller - it was his father.

Su Liang's eyes immediately flashed with a hint of understanding, and sure enough, after the phone was connected, what he heard was a voice from Xiao Budian.

"Brother!"

Su Liang smiled and replied a little helplessly: "Well, Nuan Nuan." ”

Xiao Budian couldn't wait for his brother's call the night before, and was finally coaxed to sleep by Jiang's father with various conditions of losing power and humiliating the country, and today he finally counted the points, so he couldn't wait to let his father make a cross-border call to his brother.

Finally heard his brother's voice, Xiao Budian was also happy, he still remembered his father's words, so he seriously said to Su Liang on the phone: "Brother should come on for the competition!" My brother is the most fragrant and the best! ”

A little cub is very persistent, and must add the sentence 'the most fragrant' before saying 'the best'.

Hearing this phone call, Su Liang slightly curled the corners of his mouth, and then said, "Thank you Nuan Nuan, Nuan Nuan is also great." ”

After agreeing to watch his brother's game again, Xiao Budian finally hung up the phone reluctantly.

And Su Liang quickly sorted out his equipment and prepared to go to the arena.

On January 10th, the 2003 Short Track Speed Skating World Youth Championships officially began!

Chapter 114

At 2 p.m. domestic time, the ice fans in the short track speed skating section of the Ice Kingdom have gathered anxiously to discuss today's preliminaries schedule and the topic of qualifying for this preliminaries.

Since the ISU announced the number of participants in each event two days ago, domestic ice fans have been anxious.

After all, before this, no one thought that the difficulty of qualifying for the 1500-meter individual group preliminaries would increase so much.

33L: [There are a total of 90 preliminaries, and nearly two-thirds of them will be cut in one preliminaries in the morning!!] 】

35L: [I didn't expect it, but in fact, this increase in the difficulty of the preliminaries also shows that more and more people are joining the short track speed skating event. There are pros and cons. 】

36L: [Yes, there are so many opponents this time, which actually means that the gold content of the World Youth Championships results is getting higher and higher. 】

Some of the people are nervous and anxious, and some say that this is a good thing, and so on.

As the preliminaries start at 3 p.m. domestic time get closer and closer, ice fans are getting more and more nervous, and some are worried about whether the players of the Chinese team can successfully advance to the quarterfinals.

This kind of worry is indeed not unreasonable, in addition to Su Liang's good luck in the grouping of the men's team, although there are indeed no strong players in the grouping of Wu Gang and Sun Ruixiang, it is relatively reluctant to say that the promotion is 100% sure.

And the women's team is even more here.

Liu Yuqing, a talented girl who previously emerged at the National Championships and successfully passed the trials and qualified for the women's 1500m individual event, was not very lucky.

Not only did he appear in the first group of preliminaries, but also two equally famous talented players in the same group as him, in the women's competition, Liu Yuqing's group, even if it is not a death group, is definitely not a good sign.

When the time shifted to 9 a.m. in Budapest, the players in the women's group 1-3 began to warm up, and Zhang Dongcheng, the leader of the Huaguo team, and Pei Jing, the coach of the team, were already waiting in the coach's chair.

Liu Yuqing's draw can be regarded as the worst draw of the Huaguo team in the preliminaries, if Liu Yuqing can withstand the pressure and successfully grab the qualification, then the rest of the players should have a lot of hope of winning.

At this moment, the domestic sports channel has also started the real-time live broadcast of the World Youth Championships - in fact, according to the past habits of the sports channel, events like the World Youth Championships usually only choose the final time slot for live broadcast, but with the adjustment of the internal plan of the sports channel, coupled with the fact that there are no important events at home and abroad in the past 3 days, the domestic audience has a rare opportunity to watch the complete schedule from the preliminaries to the finals of the World Youth Championships.

In the family building of the winter project coach, Xiao Budian Su Nuan was holding his Transformers and Ultraman Tiga at this moment, obediently sitting on the small chair arranged for him by Grandma Lin, and Banban was looking at the direction of the TV.

Of course, Grandma Lin had already turned on the TV for the little guy, and at this time, the TV was the scene of the players in the women's preliminaries group 1-3 warming up on the ice.

As a three-and-a-half-year-old cub ice fan who already has a wealth of experience in watching the game on the spot, Xiao Budian looked at the direction of the TV and felt a little disgusted, so he looked left and right, looked at Grandma Lin, and looked very cute with his eyes asking for help.

"What's wrong?"

Coach Lin immediately noticed Xiao Budian's eyes asking for help.

The little guy said with a blank eye: "Nuan Nuan can't see clearly." ”

Coach Lin immediately understood what the little guy meant—he wanted to sit closer.