On September 27th, the skateboard project of the Hangzhou Asian Games came to an end. Chinese athletes achieved good results of 3 gold, 2 silver, and 2 bronze in 4 events. Five years ago, at the Jakarta Asian Games, only Zhang Xin of the Chinese skateboard team won a bronze medal in the women’s bowl. Compared before and after, the Chinese team has achieved breakthroughs in every skateboarding event this year.
However, Zeng Wenhui, an 18-year-old Guangdong girl who won the silver medal in women’s street skateboarding, believes that in order for Chinese skateboarding, which has already demonstrated its skills in Asia, to further its progress on the global level, in addition to having technical and difficult skills, it is also necessary to spend more time and effort integrating into the culture of this sport.
Photographed by Cui Chenxi and Liu Ping during the competition
Five years ago, also 13 year old Zeng Wenhui participated in the Jakarta Asian Games. At that Asian Games, skateboarding was listed as an official event for the first time. At that time, Zeng Wenhui, who had been training skateboarding for less than two years, ultimately ranked fourth in the women’s street style competition. In recent years, I think the biggest change has been in psychology. “Zeng Wenhui, who has practiced martial arts for 6 years and transferred from the Nanquan event, said that her line sliding and” amplification moves “are now more stable.” Chinese skateboarding needs to communicate and exchange more, feel the atmosphere and integrate into it, and enjoy the competition. The difficulty also needs to improve, but the most important thing is to enjoy the competition and integrate into it
The words’ feeling the atmosphere ‘,’ integrating into ‘, and’ enjoying the competition ‘mentioned by Zeng Wenhui actually refer to the integration and recognition of skateboarding culture. According to the skateboarding competition principles released by the International Olympic Committee, athletes not only need to demonstrate their best skills in the competition, but also need to be evaluated in different dimensions such as difficulty, speed, execution, and style. And the ‘style’ in it is a difficult indicator to grasp and quickly improve. The snowboarding skills events at the Winter Olympics have many similarities to skateboarding in terms of sports form and cultural connotations. The success of Sean White, Higashino Hirano, and others is related to their cultural labels as sports. They not only demonstrated superb sports skills on the field, but also exhibited a richer side of their lives off the field.