Zhong Shaozhen is from Yuanfeng Village, Shiqi, Zhongshan. Since her home is next to the Qijiang River, and her father is an expert fish farmer in the production team, when she was a child, she helped her father feed pond fish and also practiced fish farming. Just a good water quality. Later, her mother sent Zhong Shaozhen to her grandmother's house for foster care. Her grandmother came from a floating family, so Zhong Shaozhen was sent to Haibin Primary School to study. During her studies, she especially loved sports and was ranked number one in the school in swimming. At the county sports meeting, she set new records in swimming events.
Due to his excellent sports performance, Zhong Shaozhen was quickly selected to train in the swimming class of Zhongshan Amateur Sports School. In 1959, the People's Liberation Army came to Zhongshan to look for sports talents and fell in love with Zhong Shaozhen. After studying in the military sports team for a period of time, Zhong Shaozhen entered the People's Liberation Army Sports Academy to practice gymnastics in 1961. In 1962, he transferred to the Navy for diving training and achieved excellent results many times. In 1966, Zhong Shaozhen participated in the diving competition of the Asian Emerging Power Games and won the platform and springboard championship awards. In 1969, she entered the national diving training team. In 1974, in the diving competition of the 7th Asian Games, she once again won the platform and springboard championships. This is also China's first Asian Games diving gold medal.
Her most glorious period occurred at the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran. "We took a boat for more than ten days to get there. The other sports teams were very surprised. Why are you here? China is not a member of the International Swimming Federation yet. We didn't know whether we could participate in the competition. We were very worried." Later, the International Swimming Federation After watching the high-level training of the Chinese diving team, officials made the temporary decision to let the Chinese team participate, and history was rewritten: Zhong Shaozhen, the women's 3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform champion, China's first Asian Games champion. "When I won the championship, several female reporters were so excited that they cried, and some local Chinese couldn't help themselves. We finally broke out of Asia."
After breaking off the elbow joint in 1978, Zhong Shaozhen Retired at the age of 30. According to the practice of many well-known athletes at the time after retirement, her career trajectory seemed to be an upward curve: national team coach, head coach, then director of a center or something else. But Zhong Shaozhen went through the opposite curve: first, she became the national team coach, and as an assistant assisted head coach Xu Yiming in training Olympic champions such as Gao Min, Xiong Ni, and Xu Yanmei. But then, she was deprived of the right to command the 1990 Asian Games, left the national team for some reason, and served on the Training Bureau Advisory Committee - for a 42-year-old female coach, it was more like early retirement. Then it’s the Guangdong team, and then the Indonesian team’s foreign aid.
Despite this, Zhong Shaozhen's attitude is still: "I am very stubborn about diving. I will never look back until I hit the south wall." When she was nearly 50 years old, her fate finally reached a turning point: in early 1998, Zhong Shaozhen He was recalled to the national team as coach, and he was gearing up and full of confidence, as if a dead tree was blooming. Especially when she saw Guo Jingjing, a team member with excellent physical fitness and the same desire to clear her name.
But in the initial stage, the combination of the two was not favored by the outside world. In August 1998, the "Jingzhong" group made their debut at the American Friendship Games. As a result, Guo Jingjing received zero points, and doubts about Zhong Shaozhen reared their head again. At the same time, Guo Jingjing's trust in the coach seems to have been greatly shaken due to FINA's changes to the swimming rules, her own injury, and her teammate Fu Mingxia's planned comeback. Guo once complained about Coach Zhong's "considerateness": "You stay with me 24 hours a day, it's annoying to death." But Zhong Shaozhen disagreed: "That's what Guo Guo is good about. If there is any problem, she won't stay overnight. The next day, she Come and greet me." In the 2000 Olympics, Guo Jingjing and Hu Jia won four silver medals, and they cried bitterly in Zhong Shaozhen's room.
Guo Jingjing, who appeared in front of people again, showed her unstoppable power, sweeping all the world competitions in the 3-meter springboard, reaching the top of the 2004 Athens Olympics, and embarking on an extraordinary star road. After Tian Liang made adjustments, she admitted her mistake and returned to the team, sounding a new rally call to prepare for the Beijing Olympics. But this time the challenge is even greater than that of 2000. It comes from newcomers, mentality and age.
At this time, Zhong Shaozhen lived as a true "worker model": every time she trained, she trotted all the way, running back and forth - here were Guo Jingjing and Wang Feng practicing springboard, and over there were Lin Yue and Huo Liang practicing platform. I get up at 6 o'clock every day and write a training plan over yogurt at 10 o'clock in the evening.