Chapter 548: Champion Challenges Champion

Chapter 548: Champion Challenges Champion

The animated film was released, and as the original author, screenwriter, and someone deeply involved in production, handling a vast amount of work, as well as the boss of both the production and distribution companies, Meng Fan had been absent from all promotional events—from preview screenings and roadshows to premieres, talk shows, and live streams—due to his preparations for the Asian Games. He could only offer support and publicity through recorded videos and Weibo posts, and even those were infrequent.

Training for the Games took top priority—though from certain angles, he didn’t really need to train at all, he still took it extremely seriously, no less than the Olympics. Next came cooperation with Asian Games publicity, which consumed no small amount of energy; popularizing and promoting the event was one of the social responsibilities and obligations of a well-known athlete. His personal affairs were pushed to the very bottom, especially those related to business.

Of course, some personal matters had no place in any priority list—like when a certain volunteer, busier than he was, found time to come to the sports institute to grab a meal with him.

As August arrived, the Zhejiang Provincial Sports Institute was far livelier than usual. Most of the athletes from Zhejiang who had qualified for the Games had gathered here for training, along with many sparring partners who hadn’t qualified and others still enrolled at the institute. After the tenth, athletes from all over the country began to arrive, followed by several national teams moving in together, including the national teams under the Weightlifting, Wrestling, and Judo Center.

Meng Fan’s daily training routine mostly involved training others more than himself. His role as a coach in the three disciplines of weightlifting, wrestling, and judo was already a given, but regulations prevented active athletes from holding such titles officially. If Meng Fan weren’t so young, the center would have long since drafted a proposal to the General Administration to appoint him as head coach.

Lazy Meng got along well with various national teams and squads, acting as a sort of “liaison” for the institute. He often brought different teams and individuals together for friendly matches and other activities, fostering a great training atmosphere and fulfilling his duties as a gracious host.

During this time, Meng Fan also collaborated with CCTV-5 on a sports science program set to air during the Asian Games, called *Champion Challenges Champion*. The show primarily focused on popularizing the basics of various sports, interviewing and filming champion-level athletes in different events, using Meng Fan’s perspective to learn about each sport from them. Another segment had Meng Fan attempting to challenge each sport himself.

Meng Fan’s challenges served two purposes: first, from a “newcomer’s” perspective, to help viewers unfamiliar or less familiar with a sport understand how to get started; second, it was all about Meng Fan’s face—since they’d invited him, it would be a waste not to put him on screen doing something.

Of course, the filming was scheduled so as not to disrupt or disturb Meng Fan’s or other athletes’ training and rest.

Each sport’s filming session was brief, with a large portion dedicated to the athletes’ daily training routines.

The program initially planned to cover twenty-four events, selecting six popular, twelve ordinary, and six niche ones, spanning swimming, archery, athletics, badminton, basketball, canoeing, equestrian, fencing, shooting, gymnastics, golf, tennis, and other major categories.

During filming, Meng Fan’s challenges left several cameramen slack-jawed and also sparked quite a few laughs. After all, with so many events, no matter how talented Meng Fan was, there were times when he was out of his depth. In some sports, even the system couldn’t help much.

Take gymnastics, for instance. Or equestrian.

Even with his excellent flexibility and agility, his heavy build made gymnastics a no-go. Just getting into the gymnastics uniform took a huge effort.

As for triggering any achievement quests, that wasn’t happening either—the system probably knew this path wasn’t for him.

As for equestrian, his tamer skills were genuine, and the horses were willing to get close to him, but he really couldn’t carry them.

If he could just carry them around for a walk, that might be bearable, but asking them to run and perform moves was just too much for the horses.

These were all expensive competition horses, and Meng Fan couldn’t bear to mistreat them.

Better to ride a whale—that suited him more.

Speaking of riding whales, we have to talk about swimming.

Zhejiang Province itself was a major powerhouse in swimming, producing many world-class swimmers. For this program, Meng Fan’s interview subject was Xu Jiayu, a backstroke specialist who had won five gold medals at the previous Asian Games (three individual, two team), earning him the nickname “Mr. Five Gold from Wenzhou.” He later won the 100m backstroke at the 2019 World Championships and then the 100m backstroke at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, breaking the world record.

Meng Fan and Xu Five Gold were both from Wenzhou and had known each other before the Tokyo Olympics. Back then, Xu Five Gold had told Meng Fan he was a fan of his manga and had “accidentally” revealed that he was one of Meng Fan’s top three fans on his live streaming leaderboard—an amusing anecdote.

“Boss Xu %￥#%#%……”

“Oh, Boss Meng here @#%#%#￥……￥#……”

The moment they met, they launched into a flurry of mutual flattery, and the kicker was that they used their hometown dialect. The sounds that entered the ears, when translated into subtitles, were nothing but a mess of garbled code.

The host and the athletes who had gathered to watch were all bewildered and laughing heartily.

The host asked, “What are you two saying? I didn’t understand a word.”

Meng Fan laughed heartily. “No worries, we don’t really understand each other either. We’re both from Wenzhou, but he’s from Lucheng and I’m from Ruicheng—not far apart, but the difference is huge. Half we understand, half we guess.”

“Then why bother?”

“Just to satisfy a craving.”

“Call off your magic, hahaha.”

Xu Five Gold led Meng Fan and the crew on a tour of the swimming team’s training, explaining basic swimming knowledge along the way, occasionally demonstrating himself or having other athletes show examples. He shared a lot of useful tips for beginners and plenty of dry, practical insights that swimming enthusiasts would appreciate—I’m a water fish, but it’s all dry goods.

Finally, it was time for Meng Five Gold to challenge Xu Five Gold.

The rules for this challenge were simple: Meng Fan could use any stroke to take on Xu Five Gold’s backstroke over a distance of 100 meters, one lap.

In terms of speed among the four main strokes, freestyle was naturally the fastest. Based on the 100m world records, freestyle was quicker than all other strokes, nearly two seconds faster than backstroke. So even if Meng Fan used freestyle and had world-class swimming ability, he didn’t have much of an advantage—because Xu Five Gold was the current world record holder in backstroke, at 48.88 seconds.

What a beautiful number.

“Any stroke is fine, right?”

Meng Fan changed into his swim trunks, stood a little shyly by the poolside, trying to look as natural as possible, hoping the camera would focus more on his upper body.

He was still quite heavy, which was certainly a disadvantage in swimming. As for his physique, it was still impressive—no more fat, all muscle, like a sculpture.

“Anything goes.”

“Can I swim underwater the whole way?”

“……You’re something else, always playing by your own rules. Underwater swimming is indeed faster than freestyle.”

“Let’s do it.”

(This chapter ends.)