In the afternoon of that day, Tang Dynasty Combination practiced regularly to prepare for tomorrow's finals.
Their sparring opponents are Gao Mingyuan and Shen Sha.
There is only one player with Extreme Speed Talent in the Chinese Table Tennis Team, so Gao Mingyuan goes with the team as a sparring partner, while Shen Sha is the main force of the women's team, used to imitate Zhen Jing, which can only be said to be overqualified.
After all, she was defeated when she met Zhen Jing in the international arena.
But it can also be seen that Cai Guodong really pays great attention to this mixed doubles gold medal. This is the first table tennis mixed doubles gold medal in the history of the Olympic Games. Considering International Table Tennis Federation's consistent renegade, it is very likely that it will be the last table tennis mixed doubles gold medal in the history of the Olympics.
Just because of this out-of-print gold medal status, tomorrow's final must also be won.
However, Cai Guodong is not satisfied now. "Wang Chao, what on earth are you doing?"
Wang Chao said doubtfully, "I'm practicing..."
"How can you compete with Gao Mingyuan for moving speed?" Cai Guodong was a little helpless. "Lin Zijun is much faster than Gao Mingyuan. You can't even compete with Gao Mingyuan. Is it possible that you want to compete head-on with Lin Zijun tomorrow?"
Wang Chao smiled, a little embarrassed. "Don't worry, I know what I know... I just want to give it a try, and didn't I win just now?"
Cai Guodong opened his mouth, but was choked by his words.
Yes, Wang Chao really won the battle just now.
Gao Mingyuan and Shen Sha adopt a classic two-side transfer tactic. According to usual practice, Wang Chao only needs to use his excellent ball control skills to control the ball. This tactic can be broken easily by reaching an angle and landing point that the opponent is not used to, but Wang Chao doesn't want to. He insists on following the opponent's rhythm and running around the field like Gao Mingyuan.
This is what it means: You mobilize me, and I mobilize you. You don't control the ball, and I don't control the ball. Let's see who can outrun whom.
As soon as he and Gao Mingyuan started running, Tang Yuanyuan and Shen Sha were forced to start running as well. Therefore, although the game was mindless, it was very physically demanding.
I don't know if Wang Chao was just unlucky or if Gao Mingyuan's balance ability is too poor when moving. In short, after five consecutive rounds, Wang Chao really outperformed Gao Mingyuan and penetrated Gao Mingyuan's defense in a running shot.
However, Cai Guodong looks uncomfortable.
In his mind, Wang Chao has always been a very mature and reliable player. Although he is young, he is very down-to-earth in his work. His reliability is comparable to that of Sun Tianlong, and even higher than that of his senior brother Luo Jiu.
However, why did this kid suddenly go crazy on the eve of Olympic Games Mixed Doubles?
Cai Guodong originally wanted to talk about tactics with Wang Chao, but suddenly he remembered that Wang Chao probably knows these things better than him, so why is there any need to talk about them?
So Old Cai finally turned around and left. "I don't care what tricks you want to do, in short, you must win for me tomorrow, otherwise I won't let you go out to play ball next year!"
Regardless of whether this statement is true or false, in short, Old Cai left immediately after saying this and disappeared without a trace, without giving Wang Chao a chance to explain. This behavior was quite scary. At least He Jingping was a little worried. He turned around to look at Wang Chao and sighed. Tone: "I don't know what you are doing. Anyway, you can make up your own mind. Even if you want to play, consider Tang Yuanyuan. If the training rhythm is ruined today, you can adjust it tomorrow, but Tang Yuanyuan is not a genius like you. She can't adjust it."
Tang Yuanyuan didn't feel insulted at all, and nodded repeatedly. "Yes, yes, Wang Chao, stop being lazy, let's fight hard."
So Wang Chao stopped running around in the next training, and started to exert force crazily, trying to penetrate the opponent with a board.
Obviously, this is a thankless task, because strength is basically his weakness.
So this practice was very difficult. The players on both sides were evenly matched, and it was impossible to determine a clear winner.
Considering that Gao Mingyuan and Shen Sha have never cooperated before and are the most typical temporary team, then this evenly matched situation is very scary...
But after He Jingping watched it for a while, he felt a little confused.
Because Wang Chao really relied on his forehand to kill the board and scored a lot of points. I don't know if the defenses of Gao Mingyuan and Shen Sha were too weak.
He Jingping has always not interfered with Wang Chao's training. He was watching and trying to understand, secretly thinking, if Wang Chao can stare at Zhen Jing and fight desperately tomorrow, just like he is fighting now, there seems to be no chance of breaking through?
It's just that I feel a little stupid to fight like this...
In short, there was nothing to say all night. When we returned to the court the next morning, the mixed doubles bronze medal match started first. The two sides were the German combination and French Combination. This was a typical European civil war.
In the end, Sissifield and Solga still defended their title of "Europe's No. 1 Mixed Doubles Team" and won the final victory 3:1. At this point, the Olympic Mixed Doubles bronze medal was obtained. The two hugged and celebrated, in a great mood. Even Rohlskov, who was sitting behind, had a smile on his face like a dried and wrinkled daisy.
It can be seen that although Rohlskov screamed fiercely, the real goal of Olympic Games this year is probably a bronze medal, and he probably has not thought about the finals at all.
In fact, even this bronze medal was obtained entirely by luck.
At 9:30 a. m. local time, the mixed doubles final begins.
Tang Dynasty Combination vs Taiwan Island Combination.
Wang Chao Tang Yuanyuan vs Lin Zijun Zhen Jing.
Originally, this was supposed to be a one-sided game. After all, two months ago in World Table Tennis Championships, the two sides had a disparity of 4:1 in the final. That was because Tang Yuanyuan did not perform well.
After returning from World Table Tennis Championships, Tang Yuanyuan conducted a deep self-reflection. Considering that she could no longer play singles and now only had the life-saving straw of doubles, she chose to calm down and practice hard for two months.
In the past two months, Wang Chao has dominated the Table Tennis Super League arena, but she has not slacked off at all in Chinese Table Tennis base.
Now that she is partnering with Wang Chao again, she believes that she is definitely not the one who fell behind.
But Wang Chao dropped the chain.
Whether it's the top four or the semi-finals, Wang Chao plays very strangely. Now in the finals, outside fans' speculation about this game is no longer one-sided. On the contrary, most people choose to support Taiwan Island Combination.
After all, Lin Zijun has been playing perfectly these two days.
Both sides guessed the coin. Tang Yuanyuan guessed correctly and chose to let the other side serve first.
In the end, Lin Zijun served and Wang Chao received the ball.
This is reasonable, because in doubles events, the server is at a disadvantage, and the receiving side can adjust the rotation order of receiving the serve by using a late-server method to allow its male players to face the opponent's female players.
For example, now, Lin Zijun serves and Wang Chao receives the ball, then the person receiving the ball from Wang Chao is the opposite female player Zhen Jing.
As long as Wang Chao can find an opportunity to attack, there is a great chance of killing Zhen Jing.
These two combinations are old rivals, so Zhen Jing is more aware of the fact that it is not only the male player Wang Chao who wants to beat me to death, but also the female player Tang Yuanyuan who wants to beat me to death. Both of them are much stronger than me.
She was a little worried, turned around and looked to her side, and saw Lin Zijun nodding to her and smiling slightly, which meant "I have everything".
Zhen Jing immediately calmed down.
She is 27 years old this year, 9 years older than Lin Zijun, and is a typical old-young match. But as the two of them work together more and more, she also feels more and more the reassuring strong aura of Lin Zijun. She is not like an older sister, but more like a younger sister. When she is being beaten crazily by her opponents, she needs a little boy to stand up and help her withstand the wind and rain with his strong arms.
When the referee blew the whistle to serve, all the fans thought that the game would be an offensive and defensive battle against Zhen Jing, just like the past few times these two partners had played against each other.
But from the beginning, the situation changed wonderfully.
Lin Zijun serve, short backspin.
Wang Chao swings back, impeccable.
Zhen Jing swings back, slightly rising.
There were no problems in the first three rounds. Although Zhen Jing's backswing was not perfect, she was not worried because now Lin Zijun is the only player in the world with Super Speed. He is the lightning man of the table tennis world. What he is not afraid of the most is the opponent's direct charge and forehand attack.
All the power of the explosive charge will become the nourishment for Lin Zijun to push back. He is not afraid of the opponent's use of force, but is afraid that he has nothing to borrow.
So now Zhen Jing plays very relaxedly. She used to have to bear the heavy responsibility of controlling the ball and was very afraid of not being rigorous enough in returning the ball. But now she can even occasionally deliberately give the opponent a loophole and wait for the opponent to attack.
Two months ago, World Table Tennis Championships, although she and Lin Zijun lost to Tang Dynasty Combination, she could still see that neither Wang Chao nor Tang Yuanyuan dared to compete When facing Lin Zijun, use all your strength. Tang Dynasty Combination uses more drag tactics, relying on good enough small ball skills and connection control capabilities in the table to stabilize the ball, and then use force when Zhen Jing catches the ball.
In fact, all the groups in the world now have the same idea when facing Taiwan Island Combination: stabilize Lin Zijun and kill Zhen Jing.
So at this moment Zhen Jing felt a little proud in his heart, for he had such a fearsome and excellent partner.
She thought Tang Yuanyuan would slice the ball carefully and wait for the next round.
But Tang Yuanyuan didn't say anything, just rushed forward and smashed the ball hard.
She was amazingly exerting all her strength in front of Lin Zijun who owned Super Speed.
Lin Zijun started instantly and responded super fast. At this moment, the ball was so fast that only an afterimage remained.
Even Cai Guodong, who was on the sidelines, shook his head slightly, feeling that Tang Yuanyuan was not calm.
But the next moment, the audience heard not one, but two sounds that seemed to ring in their ears.
The ball didn't just bounce once on the racket, but twice. It was just because it was too fast that the position could not be seen. Then the ball bounced high from a certain racket. Only then did everyone see that the ball was still in the area of the table where Lin Zijun was.
On the other side, Wang Chao was slowly taking back the piece of Superconductor racket that had been pushed to the front of the net at some point.
The referee blew the whistle and Tang Dynasty Combination scored, 1:0.
The audience was in an uproar.
The slow-motion playback started directly on the big screen. It turned out that at the same moment when Lin Zijun hit the ball, Wang Chao actually hit the racket up, so the ball almost didn't hit the ground and hit first. Lin Zijun's racket bounced back quickly. It was just like a scratch from Dragonfly touching water on the table. It hit Wang Chao's racket again and bounced back. This time, Lin Zijun didn't react and was directly bounced to death.
"Oh my God!"
The audience went crazy at this moment and started applauding enthusiastically.
The scene from the World Table Tennis Championships finals two months ago appeared in their minds.
At that time, Luo Jiu also used this method to calculate two consecutive balls of Wang Chao.
How did Qin Huachang explain it at that time?
He said that it is impossible to rely on neurological reaction for this kind of ball. You can only rely on the analysis and understanding of the opponent before the game to predict, and then bet on what the opponent will do when you encounter the ball on the spot, and then react in advance with your eyes closed. If you guess the opponent correctly, you score. If you don't guess the opponent correctly, it will look like you made an inexplicable fake move in the air.
"Wang Chao must have systematically analyzed Lin Zijun."
"This is very reasonable. With such a long preparation time, with the strength of the Huaping coaching staff, they can completely break down Lin Zijun's playing habits and daily movements."
"But it's still amazing that Wang Chao can do it."
"Have you forgotten, this is Wushuang."
"There are no bottlenecks, no restrictions, and unconditional imitation of any technology used by others. This is the true meaning of Wushuang."
"So, although it seems shocking, when you think about it, it makes sense."
However, is it really reasonable?
He Jingping, who was also sitting in the audience, shook his head.
Of course it's different.
Because when Luo Jiu was calculating Wang Chao, he could clearly see Wang Chao's movements.
But when Wang Chao calculated Lin Zijun, Lin Zijun had already entered Super Speed Mode.
Therefore, if Wang Chao wants to predict the landing point, position, angle, and direction of the ball Lin Zijun, he needs to at least see clearly what specific actions Lin Zijun made at that moment.
In other words, regardless of his nerve reaction speed, his eyes actually captured the movements of Lin Zijun at that moment.
"How on earth is this done?" He Jingping began to think hard.
"What the hell is going on?" Cai Guodong sat in the stands farther away than He Jingping and frowned slightly.
He remembered how Wang Chao went crazy yesterday and competed with Gao Mingyuan for speed.
He vaguely felt that Wang Chao seemed to have quietly undergone some magical changes, unlocking some ability that he didn't know yet.
But the head coach didn't think much about it and quickly relaxed his mind and continued to look down.
This is exactly what makes Cai Guodong and Qin Huachang He Jingping different.
He pays more attention to the overall situation. When encountering any problem, his first reaction is not to deal with it directly. Instead, he first jumps out of the box and judges from a macro perspective whether this is a problem that he needs to spend effort to solve.
If yes, then fix it.
If not, then save any effort you can.
For example, although the ball in front of you is weird, it is clear that Wang Chao has his own plan, so in what round will he be the one to rack his brains and waste all his efforts?