After Leaving the Sports Circle, I Became a Cooking God (Completed BL)

Chapter 73: Before the Start of the National Championship

Translator: dapotaturs
Release Date: 09/04/2023

After about a week of continuous busyness, Su Bai finally managed to sort out the various major tasks related to the 400-meter project after taking over.

As for the women's 400-meter team, Su Bai mainly entrusted the responsibilities to Zheng Xingguo. However, he also had a serious conversation with Zheng Xingguo, emphasizing the potential negative consequences of long-term overtraining, as well as the recovery and maintenance of the girls' bodies after retirement. Only after that did Su Bai hand over the new phase training plans for several female team members to Zheng Xingguo.

In addition to the training plans, there were, of course, technical adjustments that each athlete needed to undergo. But currently, adjusting the overall training rhythm was more important than fine-tuning the training details.

The Youth Olympics training camp athletes didn't have many other issues. After observing them, Su Bai primarily felt that Qiao Chumu's talent was indeed outstanding. As for the other reserve team members, they showed promise, but after only a short observation period, Su Bai couldn't discern too much.

When Pei Jin'an and Lü Shengbin asked about his observations, Su Bai considered it and then emphasized recommending Qiao Chumu to Lü Shengbin. As for the other athletes, he intended to evaluate them after they participated in the Youth Olympics and then make judgments during the winter training cycle.

With the situation of the women's team sorted out and the observations of the Youth Olympics athletes concluded for now, before the National Championships began, Su Bai finally had the time to refocus his attention on Cui Luoheng and the veteran team members like Qiu Wen and Zhang Ziyi.

Earlier, he had told Qiu Wen to aim to set a new personal best during the National Championships. This was not just a joke he made to Qiu Wen.

With the end of the Asian Games period, this year's major competitions were basically over. The National Championships, whether for Cui Luoheng or Qiu Wen and Zhang Ziyi, had training significance far outweighing their competitive significance.

Starting from now, their focus would shift to next year. In 2019, the Athletics Asian Championships, the Athletics World Championships, and the World Athletics Relays would all take place. These events not only had significant importance on their own but also served as a crucial opportunity for the athletes to improve themselves and enhance their strengths in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics the following year.

Before that, as national team members, Qiu Wen and the others obviously needed to secure their qualifications for the World Championships next year.

Currently, the World Championships qualification standards had not been released, but the national team had made estimations internally. Whether based on world rankings or achieving qualification standards, in the 400-meter event, they would need to run at least within 45.35 seconds to secure qualification.

This performance was already very close to the national record of 45.25 seconds in the men's 400 meters.

Currently, the athlete within the track and field team who was closest to this performance was Zhang Ziyi, who had just set a new personal best at the Asian Games with a time of 45.43 seconds. On the other hand, Qiu Wen had also set a new personal best at the Asian Games, with a time of 45.85 seconds. This placed them both 0.5 seconds away from the estimated qualification standard for the World Championships within the national team.

As for the women's 400 meters, the national team estimated that the qualification standard for the World Championships would be around 52 seconds. Currently, the best-performing athletes, Chen Yadan and Lin Huan, had personal bests of 53.35 seconds and 53.42 seconds, respectively. Compared to the men's team, the gap between the women's team and the World Championships qualification standard was even more substantial, at over 1.35 seconds.