There are so many fruits that it is difficult to hide them

The fruit is so abundant that it is difficult to cover it up

In memory of coach Zhang Renzhao, an evergreen tree in Hangzhou swimming circles

? The great poet Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty had a poem describing the autumn scenery: "Gift" "Liu Jingwen", the last two sentences of which "You must remember that the good times of the year are when oranges are yellow and oranges are green" are particularly impressive. If the talented Hangzhou swimming team is compared to a fertile orchard, and the emerging swimming talents are compared to full fruits, then Hangzhou's outstanding swimming coaches are like beautiful fruit trees. Among the many fruit-laden 'swimming trees', there is one with the oldest age, the thickest trunk and the largest crown. He is the former head coach of the national team Zhang Yadong and the former Olympic champion Luo Xuejuan. Senior Zhang Renzhao Zhang, the 'grandmaster' of Hangzhou swimming, has quietly devoted his life to swimming for more than 40 years. At the end of September 2019, I met with this respectable and lovely veteran of the Hangzhou swimming community, who is over 80 years old, and a meritorious coach with "numerous achievements", as scheduled, at his home in Liangzhu, far away from the hustle and bustle.

Zhang Renzhao was born in 1938 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. His hometown is in Zhuzhou, surrounded by lakes and graceful water. As a child by the water, Zhang Renzhao spent all day soaking in the river with his friends every summer when cicadas were noisy. Touching snails, having water fights, hitting mengzi... Playing with water was the biggest entertainment in his childhood. Being an aquatic person, he has developed good water skills since he was a child.

? Zhang Renzhao’s real connection with “swimming” was in 1957, when he was 19 years old and a high school student in Ningbo No. 2 Middle School near his home. Because of the school's organization, he signed up to participate in the Ningbo swimming competition held that year for selection to participate in the Provincial Games. Recalling the first swimming competition in his life, senior Zhang still remembers it fresh even though it was a long time ago. He said: There was no swimming pool at that time, and the temporary swimming pool used for competition was "built" in a river. The starting platform and turning platform are pontoons covered with a layer of wooden boards. The length of the swimming lane is exactly fifty meters. The waterline of the swimming lane is made of green bamboo poles strung with long ropes. At that time, there were no swimming style requirements in the competition, it was just a matter of speed. Because he swam relatively fast during the competition, he was selected into the Ningbo team after the competition, and soon participated in the provincial swimming competition held at the Yuquan Swimming Pool in Hangzhou in July of that year. In that competition, he participated in freestyle and sidestroke events. At that time, all the food and accommodation were at Zhejiang University. In my impression, there were not many events in the competition, and the scale was not large. There were more men than women, and the total number of participants in the competition was probably less than 100 people. In July 1958, he, who had never received professional training, came to Hangzhou to participate in a competition on behalf of the Ningbo team. As a result, he won second place in the freestyle event, which made him overjoyed.

In July 1959, Zhang Renzhao, who had been admitted to Ningbo Normal University, received an urgent notice from the municipal swimming team: to come to Hangzhou to participate in training and represent Zhejiang in preparation for the first National Games. As soon as he heard that he was going to compete in the national competition, Zhang Renzhao didn't hesitate and immediately packed his simple luggage and came to Hangzhou in a hurry. In the days of preparing for the competition, he and more than a dozen young swimmers selected from all over the province set out from his residence on Stadium Road, took two buses, and went to Yuquan Swimming Pool to train. When it comes to training, there isn’t even a decent coach. Two months later, this temporarily formed training team took the green train for several days to Beijing to participate in a swimming competition held at the National Swimming Center. Since he had no experience in participating in national competitions, when it was his turn to compete, he was so nervous that he didn't even hear the sound of the starting gun because he jumped into the water too late. Although he tried hard to catch up, he still didn't make it to the finals. "Senior Zhang recalled: Due to the lack of guidance before the competition and lack of experience in the competition, in this first national competition, except for the female player Chen Jiaoping who won a silver medal in the 200-meter freestyle, most of the Zhejiang team failed in the preliminary competition. He was eliminated.

Although he did not make a splash at the National Games, his experience in participating in this competition allowed him to stay in Hangzhou. After the National Games, the Zhejiang Provincial Sports Commission officially established the Zhejiang Provincial Swimming Team.

When the provincial swimming team was first established, seven or eight people were selected from the 17 people who participated in the National Games swimming competition. Among the selected members, he was the oldest, but because of his best performance, he was retained.

After Zhang Renzhao joined the provincial swimming team, he became proficient in all four swimming styles: free, back, butterfly and frog. Among them, freestyle and butterfly are the most outstanding. In the early 1960s, he was the holder of multiple provincial records in freestyle, butterfly and medley. He has broken records many times at the Provincial Games and won multiple "Zhejiang Provincial Record-Breaking Medals".

In July and August 1960, the provincial team coach took the provincial team members and more than 20 young members of the municipal swimming team to take a train to participate in competitions. First I went to Beijing to participate in the National Youth Swimming Competition, then transferred to Baoji, and then took the Baocheng Line to Chengdu to participate in the National Swimming Championships. Money was tight back then and we couldn't afford sleeper tickets. Every time we went out to compete, everyone had to sit on hard seats. Everyone talked and laughed during the day, and settled in and under the seats at night when they went to bed. I remember that when I took the Baocheng Line and crossed the Qinling Mountains, the coal-burning green train had to go through one dark tunnel after another. The train was running very slowly because of insufficient strength. At night, everyone was shaking as the train vibrated. He fell asleep in the sound. When you wake up in the morning, everyone's face is covered with a layer of black soot (because the soot that usually drifts through the chimney cannot dissipate in the relatively closed tunnel and flows back into the car). After everyone wakes up, you Look at me and I look at you, both laughing happily. At that time, the conditions for training or competing were unimaginably difficult.

In 1963, 25-year-old Zhang Renzhao was seconded by the Hangzhou Sailing Club to participate in the swimming relay competition in Qingdao’s national sailing competitions. At the end of 1963, he went to Guangzhou with the team to train for a year. In 1964, he participated in multiple national sailing competitions held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. His swimming performance reached the standard of an athlete. In 1965, the national sailing competitions were cancelled, and the city's sailing team was cancelled. After that, Wu Benfu, the former director of the sailing club and the principal of the city's junior sports school who knew him well, asked him to work as a swimming coach at the junior sports school.

When Zhang Renzhao first arrived at the Junior Sports School, he took over a swimming team of about 20 people of varying ages. In 1965, about 30 people could register for the provincial swimming competition. In order to expand the team, he recruited new players while training. Some were brought in by classmates, and some were brought in by parents with their children. Only those he thought had potential were kept. In his spare time outside of training, he often went to surrounding primary schools to look for "seedlings."

? In the junior sports school at that time, each coach had a "establishment" of 15-20 outstanding players. The establishment was reserved for the top players who could participate in municipal and provincial competitions. Established team members can eat free food from the canteen of the Junior Sports School. The free dishes provided in the canteen are divided into two types: dish A and dish B. Some children received the food but could not afford to buy food. Some children received the food and took it home for the whole family to eat.

Water training starts in May every year. In May, the water in the open-air swimming pool is still very cold. In order to prevent his team members from catching cold and getting sick, he asked each child to swim for 15 minutes at a time before going ashore. Training officially starts in June because I will participate in the provincial competition in July. Every Sunday, coach Zhang Renzhao takes the children by bus to Yuquan Swimming Pool for pre-match training, because Yuquan has a 50-meter swimming lane. Water training will last until the end of October. The training will be changed to land since November. At that time, training could really be described as hard and tiring. On the one hand, it is because of the sun and rain, and on the other hand, the training time is very long. Because the children in the swimming team all study in nearby schools, some are far away and some are near, and some come early and some come late. Although the children in the swimming team will be late, Coach Zhang is never late. At three o'clock every afternoon, he will show up at the swimming pool on time. One will practice one, two will practice one pair, and one will practice together, every day. Practice from three o'clock in the afternoon until dark in the evening.

? In 1966, the country entered a special period. All sports competitions were suspended and training in junior sports schools was suspended. During that time, all the people under the Sports Committee went to Tianshui Swimming Pool to work as lifeguards, and he was one of the most responsible lifeguards.

Although the work was very tiring, as soon as the opening hours of the afternoon session ended, he would let the children of the swimming team go over for training. Day after day, the cadres in charge of the swimming pool turned a blind eye.

In 1968, the Junior Sports School began to resume training, and coach Zhang Renzhao returned to the Junior Sports School. In order to achieve good results in training, and so that his team members would no longer have to endure the hardship of open-air training, he proposed the idea of ??rebuilding the swimming pool to Principal Wu Benfu after knowing that the swimming team had accumulated a fund during the suspension of training. I remember what he said to Principal Wu at the time: Several cities with strong swimming pools in the country train all year round. Like us, we can only train for half a year. How can we compare with others? You can add a roof to our open-air swimming pool. Just cover it. Principal Wu agreed after hearing this. At that time, I found out that the Provincial Sports Work Brigade had a batch of surplus wood. Principal Wu, who was short of funds, went to ask for it shamelessly. Principal Wu said to the person in charge of the sports team: "When you support us, you support yourself. Once the roof is added, the swimming team can carry out year-round training. If the swimming team trains well, it can provide you with talents." "Secondly, you have contributed a lot to the construction of the swimming pool. After the roof is built, you are welcome to come over for training at any time." After that, the sports team agreed to provide wood free of charge.

After the wood was pulled back one by one on a tricycle, Teacher Zhang specially asked a parent from the Provincial Architectural Design Institute to help create a design drawing for the herringbone roof. The capping project was not easy. Due to the lack of manpower, he and the workers worked together with reinforced concrete and other building materials. After a lot of hard work, Hangzhou's first "indoor swimming pool" transformed from an open-air swimming pool was finally completed before the arrival of winter.

The newly added roof covers the entire swimming pool, keeping out the scorching sun, wind and rain. After the swimming pool had a roof, while the iron was hot, Principal Wu and Coach Zhang went to the Hangzhou Boiler Factory to buy a boiler. After the boiler was installed, Coach Zhang took the letter of introduction from Principal Wu to the municipal party committee to buy coal. Approval note... In November and December, when the chimney of the boiler room started to smoke, although the water temperature in the swimming pool could only be opened to about 25 degrees, the hearts of all the swimming team members were as warm as spring. Teacher Zhang was the first to jump into the swimming pool and demonstrate swimming moves for the children. The children in the swimming team all clapped happily.

? After training throughout the year, the swimming team’s performance has improved by leaps and bounds. In the provincial swimming competition in 1971, the Hangzhou team won the first place in the overall team score, widening the gap with other teams. After the provincial swimming competition, swimming coaches from other cities also brought their team members for training. After 1972, junior sports schools in Wenzhou, Ningbo and other places also built indoor swimming pools. The swimming level of cities across the province has improved overall, laying a solid foundation for Zhejiang's swimming to achieve brilliance in the future.

? Zhang Renzhao is a coach who loves to learn. In 1971, after Sino-US relations thawed, he rushed to Shanghai with the coaches of the provincial team to observe and learn from the visiting American swimming team. He saw swimming goggles and tensioners, and listened to expert lectures. From this observation and learning, Learned a lot of valuable experience.

In 1972, Chen Bo, who retired from the provincial swimming team, was assigned to the municipal swimming team as coach. Zhang Renzhao and coach Chen Bo discussed the division of labor in training, with Zhang Renzhao leading the men's team and Chen Bo leading the women's team. In the 1970s, among the players coached by Coach Zhang were famous swimming stars Lu Jinren and Gao Ping in Zhejiang, Zhang Yadong who later became the head coach of the national team, and Lu Sui and Bai who became the backbone of swimming coaches at Chen Jinglun Sports School. Ziyue, Wu Ying, etc. According to teacher Zhang Yadong, who joined the swimming team of the Municipal Youth Sports School around 1976, he had contact with several coaches when he was at the Youth Sports School, but the one who took him the longest made him feel that the training method was the most suitable, and he admired him the most. The most important person is 'Coach A Zhang', and 'Coach A Zhang' is one of the two or three most critical people who influenced him to become a swimming coach.

Before 1986, the hard-working coach Zhang Renzhao had been the leader of the coaching staff of the swimming team of the Junior Sports School. After the junior sports school swimming team merged with the Tianshui Club in 1986, he remained a respected technical coach, enthusiastic and unreserved in asking young people for advice.

In 1990, in order to develop Hangzhou's swimming career, he left Tianshui Swimming Club when he was over 50 years old and went to serve as the head coach of Gongshu Swimming Pool, where the training conditions were more difficult. The outdoor pool of Gongshu Natatorium was very small at that time, with only three two-meter-wide swimming lanes. The walkway by the swimming pool is so narrow that you can only pass sideways. When the children are training in the pool, the splashing water often wets the clothes of the coaches walking back and forth on the walkway. Therefore, during training in autumn and winter, coaches usually Wear only sports shorts that don’t keep you warm.

When coach Zhang Renzhao went to the Gongshu Swimming Pool, he selected a few young children from the district team that was still training at that time. The other children were all from elementary schools in Gongshu District that he visited , selected one by one from each first-grade freshman class in each elementary school.

? During the school season in the late summer of 1990, Mr. Zhang selected more than 100 "little seedlings" for preliminary training at Gongshu District Primary School. The most famous one among them later became the female frog king of our country. Luo Xuejuan. Luo Xuejuan was only 6 years old at that time. "When I saw her for the first time, the child was not very tall. Our swimming team does not select athletes based on height or fatness, but on flexibility and cheerful personality. Luo Xuejuan is this type, and all the joints of her body are... They are all very flexible, which is very helpful for the standardization of movements."

Luo Xuejuan's swimming performance was not outstanding when she first started training. By the time she was in third grade, her breaststroke performance improved by leaps and bounds, and she began to win in provincial and municipal competitions. First. Mr. Zhang said: Luo Xuejuan's ankle joints are particularly agile. When practicing breaststroke, the soles of her feet are as flexible as the tail of a fish. In addition to her flexible joints, Luo Xuejuan is also very strong. She can pull seven or eight horizontal bars at a time, and even boys can't pull her up. "

In Mr. Zhang's memory, Luo Xuejuan also skipped training once when she was a child because she was afraid of the hardship of training. "She didn't go to the swimming pool to train that day. She went outside to play alone. By the end of the training, "I just carried my soaked swimsuit home." Since this incident, her father has sent her to train every afternoon, and she has never been absent all year round. Normally, because Luo's father is very supportive of his daughter's swimming, he often talks to Luo about it. Dad said hello and chatted a few words when he was free. When Luo's father asked him about his daughter's future, he also said to Luo's father many times: "Your daughter has flexible joints and good explosive power. As long as she practices well, she will If you are not afraid of hardship or tiredness, you will be very hopeful. ”

? The training was divided into two periods. In the morning before school and in the afternoon after school. Every morning at 6:30, Teacher Zhang came to the swimming pool early, waiting for the children to come for training. At 7:30, the children After practicing, he went to school and stayed to study techniques. When the students got out of school around three o'clock in the afternoon, he would take the children to practice for an hour and a half.

Every weekend, he and his parents would do the same. The children went to climb the mountains in Hangzhou. In one year, they climbed almost all the mountains in Hangzhou. Through weekly mountain climbing activities, the team members not only exercised their willpower, but also improved their physical fitness, and also brought them closer to each other. Distance from parents. According to Gao Junhong, the swimming coach of Chen Jinglun Sports School at the time, coach Zhang Renzhao was the best at getting along with the students, and sometimes he even took them to his home to make dumplings.

In 1995, after the provincial swimming competition, Luo Xuejuan went to try out for the provincial team, but she was only good at breaststroke and was quickly withdrawn. After training her for two months, the coach of the provincial team judged that her swimming style was single. She is not a good swimmer. However, Luo Xuejuan appeared in front of Zhang Renzhao the next day, her face was calm and she was still training hard, which moved the old coach. "Such a young child did not lose his temper in front of others. Tears, perseverance and stubbornness are rare qualities of an excellent athlete. "After Luo Xuejuan was returned, her parents were hesitant between asking her to give up swimming and study hard or insist on swimming. At the critical moment, Zhang Renzhao resolutely persuaded Luo Guoan, Luo's father, who came to the door for the third time, to continue to support their child in swimming practice. "If you don't want to join the provincial team, it doesn't mean there's no hope of joining other teams. I'll think of a way." While he asked Luo Xuejuan, who had just entered junior high school, to go train after class every afternoon, he also actively helped contact the swimming teams in the military region and other places. , waiting for the opportunity for Luo Xuejuan to be appreciated by other swimming coaches who cherish talents.

Mr. Zhang said: About half a year later, one night, very late, one of his favorite disciples, coach Zhang Yadong of the provincial swimming team, called him: Coach A Zhang, this child Luo Xuejuan I want it. Mr. Zhang thought for a while on the phone and said: Yadong, you can go, but don't send her back again. Coach Zhang Yadong said categorically: "I will never go back." Perhaps, everything was destined. The master and apprentice, who were not optimistic at the time, finally proved themselves on the world's highest podium after years of hard work.

? In addition to Olympic champion Luo Xuejuan, Mr. Zhang was also the first coach of world champion Yang Yu. Yang Yu joined the swimming team one year later than Luo Xuejuan. He discovered it in the "double guarantee class" during the summer vacation. The senior said: She He was the most talented child in that training class: he had a good sense of water, flexible joints, and could learn freestyle in no time. Only a month later, he asked Xiao Yangyu to train with the official team members. Later, after school started, Yang Yu didn't go to training for a period of time. The old coach came many times to do ideological work for the parents. Finally, Yang Yu's parents were moved and the little Yang Yu returned to the swimming pool...

1998 , Coach Zhang Renzhao, who provided many swimming talents for the sports team, national team and other swimming teams, retired honorably. After retiring, he still couldn't give up swimming and continued to use his spare energy in other swimming pools until he was over 70 years old. Just a few years after his retirement, Hangzhou Swimming, which had accumulated a lot of experience, ushered in its most glorious era. In the 2004 Athens Olympics, there were five names on the national swimming team's roster that were closely related to him: Zhang Yadong, He Xinzhong, Luo Xuejuan, Yang Yu, and Cheng Jiaru. As a media reporter said, this respectable veteran of Hangzhou swimming has used his persistence for more than 40 years to transport young athletes who grew up by the West Lake one after another to the whole country. , in the big swimming lanes around the world.

At the end of September 2019, on a clear day with the fragrance of sweet-scented osmanthus, I met this fit and healthy old coach at his home near the Liangzhu Museum. When we were drinking tea and chatting about his coaching past in the quiet and sunny courtyard, in the small vegetable garden in the corner of the courtyard, a tall old pepper tree studded with red peppers danced and swayed gently in the breeze. .

?