Chapter 409: Gathering All Admission Tickets

Chapter 409: Gathering the Admission Tickets

Quanzhou, a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Min Province, is abbreviated as "Li" and alias Carp City or Erythrina City—well—this name!

Uh, Erythrina is the name of a tree native to India and Malaysia. During the Tang and Song dynasties, many places in Min Province introduced this tree, with Quanzhou having the most. This tree is tall and luxuriant, with red flowers like fire. When Quanzhou expanded its city during the Five Dynasties, this tree was planted all over the city walls, streets, and alleys, hence gaining this elegant name.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, Quanzhou was the largest port in the country and one of the two largest foreign trade ports in the world at that time. A large number of merchants gathered here, among whom Arab merchants were the most numerous, directly transliterating Erythrina as the name. At that time, this nickname was used even more widely than the original name.

In addition, under the gun, no, under the pen of Marco Polo, the great brag, the "Travels" he wrote also referred to Quanzhou as Erythrina.

After the Yuan dynasty, the Erythrina trees in Erythrina City gradually decreased, and in modern times they became even scarcer. There are definitely still some, but it is basically difficult for Meng Fan to see the flourishing red Erythrina flowers at the end of April. After all, the flowering period has passed, and even Erythrina trees are rare, though he did pass by an Erythrina Road.

The Asian station of the Continental Qualification Tournament for the Weightlifting Event of the Kyoto Olympic Games was held at the China Quanzhou Sports Center. The main venue was at the Heavy Athletics Gymnasium. Quanzhou frequently held weightlifting competitions, so its ability to host events went without saying.

Very few Chinese athletes came to participate in the weightlifting qualification tournament this time. In fact, it couldn't really be described as very few. Strictly speaking, it was Meng Fan alone, because before this, the qualifications for other weightlifting events for both men and women had already been obtained, except for the weight class Meng Fan was in.

Although the Chinese team did not have an easy time under the new weightlifting weight rules, that was only relatively speaking in terms of winning medals. Securing qualification was not a problem at all.

It was only the category above 109 kilograms that had not obtained qualification. If Meng Fan got it, it would mean full participation in all male and female categories. If it hadn't been for Meng Fan, China would still have sent someone to fight for a top sixteen position in the category above 109 kilograms, and at worst, they would have taken a spot in the continental qualification tournament.

Weightlifting was indeed a traditional project of China, it was just that the heavy categories were relatively weaker, making it harder to win medals, but securing qualification was no problem.

Coming to Quanzhou this time, Meng Fan was the only athlete. Apart from the team dispatched by the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center, which included the team leader and technical consultants, President Zhan naturally accompanied the team as Meng Fan's coach.

"As long as you are in the top six, you can get the admission ticket."

President Zhan was very relaxed, at least he looked more relaxed than Meng Fan. Waiting for the competition to start after the weighing was completed, he watched Meng Fan warm up and said, "According to what you said, the registered total score is not high. As long as you lock in the top six, you can play freely."

Meng Fan smiled and said, "Didn't you say to suppress the score to guarantee the success rate? According to what you said, register lower for the first attempt, and just make sure to be the last one to appear."

Hearing this, President Zhan knew that Meng Fan had followed his advice and couldn't help but chuckle, saying, "The continental qualification tournament is still too easy for you. High or low puts no pressure on you. Looking at you, it's impossible to treat it as a regular match. Just ensure the admission ticket, there's no need to contend. However, one point still needs attention, you must ensure that you can enter Group A of the Olympic finals."

President Zhan gave a bottom-line total score to ensure that when registering the total score, he would be qualified to enter Group A. The total score could be registered high, but it couldn't be done blindly without basis.

In Olympic weightlifting, if there are many participants, they are divided into two groups, A and B, based on their registered scores. The final ranking is combined from the scores of both groups. The overall strength of Group B is entirely inferior to Group A. Therefore, even if Group B takes the top spot, they are basically missed out on medals, or even missed out on the top six, with rare exceptions. Group A is the real final, and the live broadcasts and rebroadcasts are all footage of Group A matches. Most viewers also assume that there is only one group in the weightlifting finals.

In the end, Meng Fan's snatch score was 208 kg, clean and jerk was 251 kg, and the total score was 455 kg. It was quite a bit worse than his score in the domestic trials, but it broke the original domestic record on the continental stage, and this score was absolutely fine for taking first place in the qualification tournament.

President Zhan's strategic guidance to Meng Fan was very simple: first ensure the Group A admission ticket, and then lay out the plan for the Olympic finals.

President Zhan naturally knew about the public opinion from abroad when Meng Fan broke the world record in the domestic trials before. There was no need to get angry; competitive sports always looked at performance on the field.

Of course, strategy and tactics were also aspects of field performance.

Meng Fan's qualification tournament score this time was neither high nor low, breaking the original domestic record but not ridiculously high, yet Meng Fan's performance on the field was extremely relaxed.

Didn't you say the results were inflated?

Then muddy the waters!

With the world-record score hanging out there, and this score as a fallback, but without the real strength being displayed, let them figure it out themselves!

With this, President Zhan could completely occupy the initiative and advantage in registering weights during the finals.

Meng Fan naturally had no objection. Anyway, he only needed to get the championship honor points for the first place in the qualification tournament. In any case, this tournament was indeed incapable of grinding out any match experience for Meng Fan. In terms of specification, it was not as good as the simulated training matches President Zhan arranged for him.

Securing the weightlifting qualification meant that Meng Fan's Olympic sprint was considered over.

The Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center.

The leader surnamed Xiong, upon learning that Meng Fan had confirmed obtaining the Olympic weightlifting admission ticket, immediately ran to the office of the leader surnamed Zhou.

"Old Zhou, it's secured!"

"I know."

"Then hurry up!"

The leader surnamed Zhou smiled and waved a registration form in his hand, saying, "It's all filled out, let's go!"

"Go, go, go!"

The two were very happy, carrying full excitement, and took this registration form with Meng Fan's name written on it to the Competitive Sports Department of the General Administration of Sport.

According to the rules, all sports centers and associations under the General Administration of Sport received this kind of registration form, but very few centers or associations would actually submit it.

This registration form was nothing else; it was precisely the flag-bearer registration form for the Chinese delegation at the Olympic Games.

Every center and association was qualified to recommend the Olympic flag bearer. However, generally speaking, the flag bearer for the opening ceremony of the Chinese Olympic Games had always had the tradition of being undertaken by men's national basketball players. Since first participating in the Olympic Games in '84, the athletes serving as flag bearers had been basketball players, and two of them even served consecutively for two sessions. For instance, Dayao was the flag bearer in '04 and '08, and in '12 it was A'lian, until '16 when a non-basketball Olympic flag bearer appeared for the first time, namely the fencer Lei Sheng.

With an opening ceremony, there was naturally a closing ceremony flag bearer. In the past, the opening and closing ceremonies had the flag bearer served by the same person, but later they were separated, served by athletes who performed outstandingly or achieved historical breakthroughs in the current Olympic Games. For example, Xiang Feiren, who won the 110m hurdles championship in '04, was the first closing ceremony flag bearer who was not the opening ceremony flag bearer. Since then, in '08, '12, and '16, it had always been served by female athletes.

The Olympic flag bearer could be said to be the face of a national delegation; it was a supreme honor!

"Another one!"

The Competitive Sports Department received the registration form brought together by the two directors of the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center, and said with a smile, "Since breaking the basketball 'monopoly' in '16, there are really quite a few submitting registration forms this session. Who did you submit... Ah, it must be him!"

Looking at it, it was indeed Meng Fan.

"Many registered this time? Who are they!"

Hearing this, Zhou and Xiong immediately became alert.

"Don't ask me, this is confidential. However, I can disclose a little. From the perspective of results, this one of yours is a long shot! Except for the basketball side, they are all Olympic champions."

"In terms of significance, this one of ours is the first athlete in Olympic history to span three major events! In terms of strength, this one of ours has no rivals in the two major events of wrestling and judo, and broke three world records in weightlifting! In terms of popularity, who is more popular than this one of ours currently! In terms of appearance, it goes without saying, right!"

"Yes, yes, yes, what you say is right! But, it's useless to tell us, we are only responsible for submitting, we can't make the decisions on other things."

"Whether it's useful or not, I will still say so!"

The two thought about it and still felt they needed to find the people above in advance. Although there were still two months until the Olympic roster came out, and although the Olympic flag bearer was determined at the very end, and although in short, this kind of thing was better early than late. If they hadn't been waiting for Meng Fan to take the weightlifting qualification, they would have gone long ago!

As for Meng Fan, he naturally didn't know about this matter. If he really had to wait to know, it would definitely be much later, at least after the roster was announced, or even after reaching Kyoto.

Returning with the team to Qinhuangdao to attend the summary meeting for weightlifting, Meng Fan was considered "liberated" next. The Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center naturally no longer arranged any competitions. As for training, it still followed the best previous method—letting Meng Fan make his own decisions, and the accompanying team dispatched mainly played an auxiliary role.

After returning to Hangzhou, the May Day long holiday arrived. For athletes preparing for the Olympics, what holiday or non-holiday was there? Even for Meng Fan, it was the same. He still trained almost every day, and the training volume was never short-changed, sometimes even more. To be honest, the team following Meng Fan as well as President Zhan looked on with alarm, worried that Meng Fan's training volume was too large and might cause injuries.

Logically speaking, with Meng Fan's current strength, not training wouldn't be a big problem, and even the team and President Zhan wouldn't force him. But Meng Fan was clearly much more serious than they imagined. Sometimes they instead couldn't quite understand why Meng Fan was working so hard, and would even advise Meng Fan to train a bit less.

They also asked Meng Fan, but Meng Fan's answer always made them feel a bit strange. Meng Fan said he was a lucky person, so he had to work harder, at least to work hard enough to be worthy of his luck.

The reason it felt strange was probably because these few people all heard the meaning of "my talent is too enviable so I'd better work hard to appear relatively ordinary."

Of course, compared to other athletes' closed training, Meng Fan still had a lot of freedom. For instance, he could go to class, go shopping, watch movies, accompany his girlfriend, and pet the big cat.

Well, during the May Day holiday, Meng Fan couldn't even accompany his girlfriend if he wanted to, because Meng Caiwei, who had initially completed her weight loss goal, had "come out of the mountains." Taking advantage of the May Day holiday when Wu Tong had no classes, she forcefully took her to Japan to play. To put it nicely, it was to go ahead as an outpost to make some preparations for the family to watch the matches during the Olympics, but it was estimated that they went to sweep the stores, after all, they had been holding back from shopping for so long.

In addition, from the WeChat messages sent by Wu Tong, Meng Fan also knew that besides the two of them, Bai Zhi and Su Qingcen were also there. In addition, the Meng family's female tycoon Meng Caihe happened to be on a business trip in Kyoto, and furthermore, there was Meng Caiwei's good friend Ishihara in Japan. This group of six women was not just shopping; it was practically blowing up the streets.

Su Qingcen went out to play on holiday, but Hu Yijing was not idle. After Meng Fan took the weightlifting qualification tournament, relevant invitations reached a peak during this period. Afterwards, a batch was sorted out and screened until only six were left to be sent to Meng Fan. However, Meng Fan didn't give a reply for the time being, deciding to wait for Meng Caiwei to come back and let her help discuss it with Hu Yijing.

With Wu Tong away, Meng Fan, who had plenty of energy at night, immediately accumulated much more saved chapters for "Shanhai Qiren".

After the May Day holiday ended, people from the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center came, bringing along the male heavy-category athletes who had obtained Olympic qualifications in the two major events of wrestling and judo, and stayed by Meng Fan's side to complete a one-week special training.

Compared to previous special training, the specification of the athletes coming this time was clearly the highest, which showed the recognition of Meng Fan as a "coach" by the training base side.

On May 16, the special training was completed. The Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo side came to pick up the people, and Meng Fan submitted a training application form. Meng Fan's training autonomy was very high. The reason he submitted an application this time was because he needed the help of the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center.

"Xiao Meng, to be honest, I don't quite understand what this means. Why do you want to train like this? Is this really training?" The person from Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo finished reading the application form, looking completely blank, and issued a triple strike of doubts.

Meng Fan's answer was also straightforward: "It's like this, I indeed have no rivals in the two major events of wrestling and judo, and my only rival is myself. In terms of strength, technique, and tactics, I have already reached a bottleneck. Even if appropriate opponents are arranged for me, it's very hard to break through, so I thought of this method. Perhaps going from the bottom up will give me some inspiration."

"...I'd better just call Director Zhou for you directly."

The visitor listened in total confusion. How did it sound like there was a meaning of traveling the length and breadth of the motherland's great rivers and mountains to seek sudden enlightenment and breakthrough? Martial arts and cultivation to practice peerless divine skills!

Not only was he dumbfounded, but Director Zhou was equally stunned; yet in the end, he approved Meng Fan's request. After hanging up, he began dialing with a gloomy expression, calling the heads of the heavy athletics departments at provincial sports institutes across the country, asking them to prepare for Meng Fan's visit and exchange.

The heavy athletics departments of provincial sports institutes were certainly not under the jurisdiction of the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center—they weren't even in the same system. However, the three sports of weightlifting, wrestling, and judo accounted for half of the heavy athletics departments, so they would surely grant the favor.

Still, the heads of the heavy athletics departments at various institutes were equally bewildered. Meng Fan, who had no equal even on the international stage, coming to their provincial sports institutes for a visit and exchange—what was that about? What kind of strange taste was this?

Of course, they were welcome. Setting aside the "Meng's Training Method" rumored from the national team, which combat sports athlete wouldn't want to be lifted high and wrestled down by Meng Fan?

I recommend a very good book to everyone: "I'm Not an Ordinary Person" by Yisigou. An established author, quality guaranteed, not to be missed.

(The chapter ends)