Chapter 251: The battle begins

Although the incident was hyped by the media, it did not have much impact on Li Tian. With the interference of the event organizing committee, the reporters could not disturb him, and he himself was too lazy to pay attention to those splashing reports. Foreign media expressed their opinions on Li Tian participating in the World Swimming Championships as a professional track and field athlete.

"There is no one in the Chinese swimming world, and the world youth championship in the track and field is 'fallen' to make up for the number!" - Japan's "Yomiuri Shimbun" first jumped out and sarcastically. In recent years, due to the emergence of a group of top experts in the world swimming world, such as Yasuke Kitashima, today's swimming event has made great progress under their leadership, and it has gradually become a trend of replacing the Chinese team and becoming the new Asian swimming world overlord. Therefore, in public opinion, it is naturally necessary to suppress the morale of the Chinese team. Moreover, the Japanese team sent the strongest lineup in this World Swimming Championships, and had already made crazy statements before the game, surpassing China in terms of gold medals and total medals, and becoming the NO.1 of Asia.

"Is Li Tian's participation in the competition? Is it hype?" - The Sydney Morning Post raised doubts about this matter, and this is also a question that most foreign media have. Li Tian has proved in the world's highest-level track and field events that he is indeed one of the top players in the field today. Such a player suddenly gave up the Golden League and turned to an extremely unfamiliar swimming event, which really made many people feel incredible. Moreover, through their understanding, Li Tian was hurriedly recruited by the Chinese team just because of a school sports competition. In this regard, the media are very ridiculous. Judging from the huge sensational effect now, Li Tian naturally has to be suspected of hype.

"I'm damaging my own value, and the World Track and Field Youth Championships are willing to be a foil. Li Tian's future in the World Swimming Championships is completely foreseeable!" - "American Sports Age" even made a prediction for Li Tian's participation. Based on their investigation of Li Tian's swimming data more than a month ago, he swears that Li Tian was just going through the preliminaries, and it was even more stupid to recruit Li Tian into the team. They will pay a heavy price for this stupidity.

"Even Asia's No. 1 'Flying Man' in the swimming pool cannot take off. Perhaps only by laying a track and field track in the swimming pool can Li Tian surpass Michael." Many American media even joked that the number one American player Michael Fairps will participate in the capture of eight events at this World Championships, and he is likely to meet Li Tian directly in the men's 100m freestyle event, while more American players completely ignore Li Tian's participation.

Compared with the suspicion, contempt, and even sarcasm of other foreign media, only the German media who knows Li Tian very well expressed some expectations for him, especially after the German media sent someone to interview Mr. Elton, the head coach of the Swimming Club of the Cologne Sports Academy, his answer added this kind of expectations to German journalists.

Faced with the arrogance and satire of foreign media and players such as Japan and the United States, Chinese sports fans could no longer remain silent. One after another, the "dispute" on the Internet was fiercely unfolding, and the "war" quickly spread out. Soon, various domestic media also joined in. In the later stage, Russia and the Netherlands team and other American teams also joined in. The game had not officially begun, but an invisible "world war" had already started. Many domestic media even used fierce slogans such as "anti-Japanese" and "anti-American" to describe this competition. The strong smoke of gunpowder over the field could be heard everywhere.

On Tuesday, August 15, the Shanghai World Swimming Championships finally opened its curtain. As the first world's highest-level sports event after the World Football Cup, it gathers the attention of almost all sports media and swimming enthusiasts around the world, and CCTV will also broadcast the competition globally throughout the whole process.

Although the weather was not ideal that day, it started to rain lightly since the early morning, it did not affect the enthusiasm of the majority of Chinese swimming fans to go to the arena to cheer for the Chinese team. In the past few days, various "wars" of the Internet and media have already made Chinese swimming fans excited. Several main roads leading to Qizhong Forest Sports City have already seen a lot of traffic since 8 o'clock in the morning.

At the beginning, FINA was worried that the Chinese event organizing committee would arrange the competition location in the Qizhong Forest Sports City Club, which is a relatively remote suburb of Shanghai. The competitions in the past few days were not held on weekends and holidays, which would greatly affect the attendance rate of the stadium. However, since Li Tian joined the Chinese swimming team, with his strong star effect, most of the tickets had been booked half a month ago, and the remaining small number of tickets were rushed to be purchased by sports fans in the past two days.

"Now everyone knows very well what the outside world has evaluated our Chinese swimming team over the past few days. Whether it is a hero or a bear depends on your actual performance in the past few days. I originally didn't plan to add pressure to you before the game, but now I want to remind you that all Chinese sports fans are watching you. No matter what the final result is, I ask you to invest 200% in every game to give you the highest level to fight back against those suspicions and contempts of you. China Swimming has been silent for too many years. Now it is time to slap those guys who look down on us. Do you have confidence?" At the last mobilization meeting before the Chinese swimming team, head coach Zhao Ge looked at all the players sitting below and shouted loudly. As the direct person in charge of the Chinese swimming team, nothing makes him angry than being despised by his opponents.

"Yes!" The players' answers were firm and powerful, especially several players with great strength, looking forward to showing their achievements in the competition. Wearing the national team uniforms and organizing their sports bags, the seventy male and female athletes, led by the coaches, boarded two luxury buses and rushed directly to the stadium, and two police cars were responsible for driving the road in front of the bus.

"Ha! It seems that there are quite a lot of people who are going to cheer for us today. I want to have a fight with the Americans right now!" Along the way, there were police cars in the Chinese team leading the way, and the road was unobstructed. The closer the field, the more dense the vehicles on the road became. When the Chinese team's special car passed by, people from the vehicles next to them stretched out their heads to wave at them, shouting, come on, and many vehicles even shouted their whistles to the Chinese team. For a moment, the roar of the horns of the cars on the whole road was heard, making the Chinese team members in the car even more excited.

"There are those little Japanese who are overestimating themselves. This time I must teach them a lesson so that they can clearly understand who is the Asian boss. Lao Zeng, the important task of killing Kitajima will be left to you!" Among the four swimming styles of the Chinese men's team, breaststroke is the relatively weakest, but the rival Japanese team has Olympic champion Yasuke Kitajima in this event. As the main player of the Chinese men's team's breaststroke, Zeng Qiliang's pressure is undoubtedly the greatest.

"Okay, I will do my best! Then let's give Japan a 'broken dumpling'!" Zeng Qiliang also said loudly at this time. In addition to the breaststroke event he led, the Chinese men's team has Li Tian in the freestyle event, Zhang Lin and other experts in the freestyle event naturally do not take the Japanese team seriously. In the backstroke, Ouyang Kunpeng is a well-deserved Asian boss, and the Asian records of all three backstroke events are still firmly in his hands, and the whole Asia cannot find an opponent at all. Wu Peng has long surpassed the level of Asian players in the butterfly event; in addition, the strong joint lineup of several Chinese team masters in the relay event, defeating the Japanese team is expected. As long as he performs well in breaststroke, the Chinese men's team will most likely completely defeat this Asian biggest opponent in this World Championships and give them the most powerful counterattack before the game.

At 8:45, the Chinese team entered the venue for 45 minutes in advance. At 9:30 in the morning, the men's 200m freestyle preliminaries, the first event of this World Swimming Championships, will be staged first. Zhang Lin and Huang Shaohua will represent the Chinese team in this event.

Although the task for Li Tian is not heavy, it is very critical, because the men's 4X100m freestyle relay preliminary round was held in the morning and then decided in the evening. This is also one of the events that the Chinese team values ​​the most. The goal is to enter the top four and get the ticket to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In addition to the above two events in the morning, there are also women's 50m breaststroke, 100m butterfly, 100m backstroke, 4x200m freestyle relay and men's 100m backstroke, 100m breaststroke, 100m butterfly, 400m individual medley and other 100m competitions. After 19 pm, the finals and semi-finals of these ten events will be arranged. It can be said that the entire schedule is quite compact.

The national flag, gongs, drums, trumpets, and mineral water bottles are four magic weapons for the Chinese audience who came to the scene. Using these four magic weapons, they can completely drive the atmosphere of the competition and provide the strongest support for the Chinese team. The 15,000 seats in the audience have long been stuffed with the audience, and there is a bright red everywhere.

"Let's go, they all warm up. Let's go to the reserve pool at the back together. I'll introduce you to some of your main opponents. Only by knowing yourself and your enemy can you win every battle. You know too little about your competitors." Since Li Tian participated in the 4-by-100-meter freestyle relay was the last event in the morning, he and his teammate Chen Zuo were not in a hurry to warm up. Therefore, Chen Zuo planned to give Li Tian a lesson. As an old player in the national team, he knew much more about this than Li Tian.

The preparation pool in the backcourt was indeed very lively. A large number of top international swimming experts gathered here. Chen Zuo introduced the detailed information of these experts to Li Tian one by one. Chen Zuo had a deep study from their various competition data to technical characteristics, so the introduction was quite clear.

After a while, American star Michael Phelps and Korrock will be the first to play in the 200m freestyle competition; Australian genius player, Ian Thorpe, the world record holder of the men's 200m freestyle; men's 100m freestyle world record holder, Hoganband, known as the Dutch "flying fish", South African star Roland Schuman, etc. These people will become Li Tian's strongest opponents in the competition for the men's 100m freestyle event.
Chapter completed!