Foreign media have made such comments: It is a tragedy for divers and Gao Minsheng to be in the same era.
In that era, as long as Gao Min participated, the other female players could only compete for second place.
Not only did she win China’s first diving Olympic gold medal, she was also the first female athlete in the history of world diving to break 600 points.
Even Fu Mingxia and Guo Jingjing later called Gao Min "big sister" when they saw her.
Gao Min is also known as the "Queen of Diving".
On July 9, 1970, Gao Min was born in Zigong City, Sichuan, known as the "Salt Capital".
Gao Min’s father loves sports and once won the Chongqing Junior Swimming Championship.
There is a river called Fuxi River next to her home. 4-year-old Gao Min has been taken by his father to swim in Fuxi River since he was a child.
It may be that Gao Min inherited her father's swimming gene, and her level improved quickly.
When he was 6 years old, Gao Min entered a sports school, but it was not swimming, but gymnastics.
Gao Min, who has been interested in water since childhood, had no feeling for gymnastics and gave up after practicing.
When she was 9 years old, she and her friends went to the Fuxi River for a swimming competition and were accidentally discovered by Yang Qiang, the diving coach of the Zigong Youth Sports School.
This accident opened the beginning of Gao Min's brilliant career.
Gao Min is very spiritual in diving. After studying in a sports school for one year, he has reached the level that others have studied for three years.
In the junior diving competition held in Sichuan Province, she defeated many professional athletes and won the championship, and was directly selected into the Sichuan Provincial Team.
At first, her mother Jiang Zhonghua did not agree with joining the provincial team.
Because Gao Min has a smart mind and good academic performance, participating in the youth sports school is just a part-time training.
If you join the provincial team, you will have to give up your systematic studies.
Athletes are all about youth. If they cannot practice well, even eating will be a problem in the future.
But Gao Min was very passionate about diving, so her mother had no choice but to agree.
Gao Min, who joined the provincial team, cherishes this hard-won opportunity and trains the hardest in the team.
In her body, she has both the wildness of training, the hotness of Sichuan girls, and her own aura. After scientific and systematic training, her performance has improved rapidly.
In July 1983, Gao Min, who had just turned 13, represented China for the first time and won two championships in the 4th World Age Diving Championships.
Gao Min's outstanding performance was directly spotted by the national team. In 1985, she was selected for the national team at the age of 15. The person in charge of her training was Xu Yiming, the head coach of the national diving team.
Several years later, Gao Min still vividly remembers Coach Xu’s lecture when he first joined the national team:
Can any of you tell me why you are here? Do you know how much the country spends to support you? Thirty farmers support one of you! Why does the country spend so much money to support you? It is to allow you to win glory for the country, to let our five-star red flag rise in the world, to the highest point, to let the world look up at our flag and listen to our national anthem. You must make your opponents familiar with our national anthem!
For a 15-year-old girl, Coach Xu’s words were shocking and directly shaped Gao Min’s values.
Under the guidance of Coach Xu, the "high-sensitivity era" of diving began, and opponents continued to hear our national anthem.
From March 1986, when Gao Min, who was under 16 years old, participated in the national diving competition in Rostock, Germany, to before the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
In the 7 international diving competitions she participated in, she won all championships.
The international diving community exclaimed that China has a "Queen of Diving". With her, others can only finish second.
In Gao Min's heart, the diving gold medal in the Seoul Olympics is what she wants to win most.
On September 25, 1988, the women's diving finals began.
Gao Min was very relaxed. While waiting for the finals to start in the lounge, he actually fell asleep lying on the carpet.
In the first five rounds of the competition, Gao Min did not dance very smoothly and only ranked second. This gave many contestants hope, but she was not anxious at all.
Starting from the 6th round, Gao Min showed the domineering power of the "Queen of Diving" and scored 5 high scores at once, leaving all the players far behind.
Gao Min was the last one to appear in each round. After all the contestants before the 8th round finished, no one surpassed Gao Min’s score of 7 rounds.
In other words, in the last round, even if Gao Min did not jump, she would still be the champion. The game has turned into a battle for runner-up. This is not the second time in the history of the Olympic Games.
In the end, Gao Min won the championship with 580.23 points, a huge advantage of 45 points ahead of the second place.
In 1987, 1988 and 1989, Gao Min was named the world's best diver of the year by the American "Swimming World" magazine for three consecutive years.
Four years passed quickly. In 1992, the 25th Olympic Games was held in Barcelona as scheduled.
At this time, Gao Min was still at the peak of her diving skills, but she was under great pressure.
Not only does she have to bear the pressure of winning a second Olympic gold medal, she also has to endure injuries caused by years of intense training.
In the preliminaries, she only ranked third, and people talked a lot about her.
At this time, Coach Xu said to her: "The world-class opponents are close to each other. As long as you don't make mistakes, you can definitely defeat them!"
The game process was indeed what Coach Xu said. Same.
The finals started on August 3. According to the preliminary rankings, she was the third to last player.
In the first two rounds, she ranked ninth, and all the Chinese viewers in front of the TV began to sweat for her.
At the end of the third round, we caught up to fifth place.
After the fifth round, she was temporarily ranked second, 5.64 points behind the first-place diving star Rashko.
In the sixth round, the optional action began. Gao Min and Rashko's diving actions were both 105B, and both scored 59.04 points.
Starting from the seventh jump, Gao Min’s performance was 205C. He jumped calmly, reversed gracefully, and entered the water perfectly. The referee gave a score of 67.2.
On the other hand, Rashko made serious mistakes due to too much pressure and only scored 37.8 points.
With this perfect jump, Gao Min rose to first place.
In the eighth and ninth jumps, Gao Min completed each one better than the other, scoring high scores of 67.2 and 74.7 respectively.
At this point, the game has lost its suspense.
In the last round, the highly sensitive 533D movements included a one-and-a-half-turn reflexive somersault and two-and-a-half-turn turn. The movements were performed vividly and impeccably, and the audience responded with warm applause and cheers.
In the end, Gao Min won her second Olympic gold medal with a high score of 572.4, 58.26 points ahead of Rashko, and became the first Chinese female athlete to win consecutive Olympic gold medals.
This Olympic gold medal is also the last gold medal in Gao Min's diving career.
After the Barcelona Olympics, facing injuries caused by training, the pressure of competitive sports, and the burden of the national system, the 22-year-old Gao Min chose to retire at his peak, ending the "Gao Min Era" in the diving world. ".
After retiring, Gao Min chose to study in the United States and met her first husband Su Dong.
The two soon married and had a son.
However, the two had serious differences in the direction of their career development. Su Dong wanted to go to Singapore, and Gao Min wanted to stay in the United States. So the marriage ended sadly, and the son was raised by Gao Min.
In 1997, 27-year-old Gao Min went to Canada and met her current husband, Chinese professor Chen Zhigang, at a Chinese gathering, teaching economics at a university in Edmonton, Canada.
Chen Zhigang was 10 years older than her and was her loyal diving fan. Later, the two got married and gave birth to a son.
Today, Gao Min has returned to China to develop and is mainly engaged in public welfare undertakings.
Many people think that she should do something for Chinese diving when she returns to China.
However, Gao Min said, I currently have as little contact with people in the Chinese diving community as possible. Because I am no longer in this circle, and everyone’s ideas are very different and we can’t get together.
No matter what happens now, the high sensitivity in the athlete period has made great contributions to the country, giving the Chinese a place in the world of jumping.
Even Guo Jingjing, who has won 10 world championships, was still very humble when meeting Gao Min.
In Guo Jingjing’s view, the achievements of her predecessors are unparalleled and they are always role models in her heart.