At the Beijing Figure Skating Team’s training rink, it was currently the skaters’ on-ice practice time.
“Bang” Another solid thud of a fall echoed across the ice. Wang Qingwei, the team’s female singles skater who was practicing her footwork, shrank her neck slightly and couldn’t help but glance toward the source of the sound.
Sure enough, it was her senior fellow apprentice, Xi Ming, who had fallen on the ice.
He was pushing himself up from the ice, and from his calm expression, one could hardly tell that he was the one who had just taken a spill. After adjusting his gloves, he nodded at Coach Zhao. “Let me try again.”
So Wang Qingwei watched as her senior, after a simple glide, gradually picked up speed, turned, and then suddenly launched himself forward into a jump.
One rotation, two rotations, three and a half!
As Wang Qingwei held her breath, Xi Ming once again failed to land and crashed onto the ice.
“Your axis after takeoff is really all over the place.” Zhao Zhengchang didn’t pay attention to the gaze of the junior disciple watching from the side; he simply observed Xi Ming getting up and commented on his triple Axel, “You’re completely relying on the height from your jump to force out enough rotations.”
“Yeah.” Xi Ming nodded without denying it.
At the moment of takeoff for that jump, both Xi Ming and Zhao Zhengchang knew he wouldn’t be able to hold the landing. But Zhao Zhengchang wasn’t trying to criticize Xi Ming instead, after speaking, he broke into a smile. “Congratulations, Xiao Xi. You’re about to get back to the level you had when you were thirteen.”
“That sounds pretty bittersweet.” Xi Ming smiled. Though he said “bittersweet,” it was clear from his expression that he was quite relaxed.
After all, when he had first recalled his past life’s memories, almost all of his jumps on the ice were a complete mess.
The memory he had the upper hand on was that he had been away from the rink for four years, and the last time he skated, he could easily pop a triple Axel. But in reality, he could barely hold onto his triples, and the only reason he could land triples with his current body was thanks to the muscle memory from his previous self’s relentless training.
After three months of training, he finally felt like he had control over his current body. And his performance at the previous championship was indeed the best state he could offer at the time.
However, going from being a former figure skating prodigy to a skater struggling to maintain his form, Xi Ming didn’t feel a sense of loss instead, he found it interesting. After all, he had experienced both possible paths life could take, hadn’t he?
Besides, having the chance to stand on the ice again meant that the existence of some difficulties was merely a small hurdle within this enormous stroke of luck.
With that thought, Xi Ming ended his brief rest and continued gliding, then jumping.
A straight-line glide, right toe pick, a clear outside edge takeoff on the left foot Xi Ming leaped high, spun three rotations, and the moment he landed, he picked in with his left toe again and took off.
Triple Lutz to triple Toe Loop (3Lz+3T) a clean and crisp combination jump that was clearly far more perfect than Xi Ming’s earlier shaky 3A.
Wang Qingwei, who had been caught zoning out while watching her senior train and had gotten her head tapped by Zhao Zhengchang in exasperation, couldn’t help but widen her eyes at this jump.
Sure enough, Senior Xiao Xi isn’t human!
The intensity he’d shown earlier while trying to regain his difficulty was terrifying enough, but after loosening up recently, he’d become even more freakish.
She clearly remembered that before the championship, the coach and her senior had said his high-level triple-triple combination was extremely unstable, so aside from the short program, it hadn’t been choreographed into his routines.
And now, just a few days had passed, and her senior’s combination jump looked pretty much perfect, didn’t it?
As expected, you can’t trust a word her senior says he even often claimed he was just an ordinary nobody in the domestic figure skating scene.
As for his junior fellow apprentice Wang Qingwei, or the faint glances from others on the rink, Xi Ming had no idea. Or rather, immersed in his training state, Xi Ming didn’t care about those gazes either.
For a high school freshman like Xi Ming, balancing academics and training meant his time was extremely tight, so he couldn’t afford to waste a single moment on the ice.
Set after set of jump training whether he landed cleanly or fell Xi Ming looked completely composed, simply quickly moving on to the next attempt, and his takeoff and landing form improved with each try.
By the time Xi Ming finished his jump training and was tracing compulsory figures with his blade on the ice, Zhao Zhengchang timed the end of his on-ice session.
“You’re the only one on our team with the patience to trace compulsory figures. Those little monkeys can’t stand practicing this the most.” Zhao Zhengchang glanced at the tracings on the ice and said to Xi Ming.
Compulsory figures had long since become a thing of the past in figure skating competitions, but practicing them strengthened a skater’s edge control, which was very helpful for skating skills.
However, for a group of restless kids, this exercise was a bit dull compared to everything else. In the current team, only Xi Ming was the one who settled down and practiced it seriously.
“After all, they’re still kids.” Xi Ming said it as if it were the most natural thing, and his tone made Zhao Zhengchang stare at him for a moment before he couldn’t help but give him a pat.
“You’re only just fifteen, acting all world-weary.”
Xi Ming couldn’t exactly say that in his previous life he’d already been nineteen, and even at nineteen he wouldn’t have been considered mature in front of Zhao Zhengchang it was just that Xi Ming had been through too much, so his personality had naturally become steadier and more composed. He could only sigh helplessly at his coach. “They just seem like kids to me.”
Xi Ming’s words weren’t exactly wrong. The Beijing provincial figure skating team had only been established for less than two years, and the skaters they’d recruited were all juniors fifteen-year-old Xi Ming could count as the older brother among them.
“Alright, our team’s most mature Xi Ming.” Zhao Zhengchang walked with Xi Ming, who had just swapped out his skates, toward the off-ice training room. They were going to review the day’s practice. “Then I trust you won’t go sneaking extra training sessions behind your coach’s back and making him worry anymore.”
Xi Ming choked on his words, his gaze drifting to the side, and could only mumble, “I was just too anxious back then.”
At the start of last season, Xi Ming had been so anxious that he’d hidden extra training from his coach and family. The result was that his technique hadn’t improved, and he’d also earned himself a knee injury. Fortunately, it was only a minor issue and healed after a few days of rest, but afterward, the psychological problems caused by the injury stalled his progress for quite a while.
It had been a very counterproductive bout of secret effort one of the pits that his past self had dug for the current Xi Ming.
Even though it was all still him, now that his nineteen-year-old memories held the upper hand, it gave him a sense of fragmentation, as if he’d been screwed over by his past self.
But Xi Ming had to admit that, given his personality, under those circumstances, he really would have tried something like that.
He wouldn’t choose to give up figure skating after all, since he’d started learning it at age four, it had become something he loved more and more. But he also genuinely worried about becoming a former figure skater who’d sunk into obscurity, because only through personal experience could he feel the psychological pressure that came after his technique completely collapsed.
And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been aware of the gossip during that period almost no one believed he could recover his competitive form. Becoming a second-tier domestic figure skater, or retiring and switching to amateur skating, was what many people had predicted for his future a year ago.
His mother, Qian Xiuyu, held a discouraging and pessimistic attitude toward his professional figure skating career for the same reason she didn’t want Xi Ming to develop mental issues from the huge gap between his childhood level and where he was now.
What should have been normal growth, something any young person looked forward to, had instead become a hurdle that could destroy his career a frustration and unwillingness shared by many figure skaters.
“In any case, don’t put that much pressure on your body from now on.”
Zhao Zhengchang hadn’t brought it up to criticize Xi Ming again, but simply hoped his disciple would take care of himself. “See, once you relaxed, you recovered much faster.”
“Yeah, I know, Coach.” Xi Ming naturally accepted his coach’s concern.
Besides, now that Xi Yu and his coach were keeping a close eye on him, and his friends were acting as informants, there was no way Xi Ming could sneak in extra training anyway.
“Any news yet, about the national team summer camp?”
After wrapping up the day’s training review, Zhao Zhengchang brought up another matter. At the end of June, the annual summer training camp would begin.
The camp was held at the national team’s rink, organized by Feng An, the current head coach of the national figure skating team. Besides the existing national team members, skaters would also be selected from various regions based on their results from the just-concluded season to form the national training squad for a month of intensive training.
Aside from improving skill, the most important thing was that at the end of the camp, the annual pre-season JGP selection competition would be held to allocate spots for the Junior Grand Prix events in the second half of the year.
“Last year, Yu Jinghui placed fourth at the World Junior Championships, and our country’s world junior ranking was also fourth.” Zhao Zhengchang looked at Xi Ming, who was listening intently, and continued, “So this year, we have seven competition spots.”
The figure skating series hosted by the International Skating Union the one aimed at juniors was the Junior Grand Prix. Held annually from August to October, it consisted of seven events total. Skaters could participate in at most two events, and based on accumulated points, the top six advanced to the final.
The number of JGP spots each year was determined by the previous season’s World Junior Championships ranking. With China ranked fourth, they had one spot per event in the new season.
“Only the top two in the selection competition get two events; third through fifth each get one.” Zhao Zhengchang added with a sigh, “This is still a year with a relatively high number of spots.”
Xi Ming knew why he said that.
Yu Jinghui, the same age as Xi Ming, was currently the top junior skater in the country. In the just-concluded season, it was also fourteen-year-old Yu Jinghui’s first appearance on the international stage, and he’d achieved impressive results.
Although he did not make it into the JGP Final, Yu Jinghui actually ranked sixth in points, but because there were two skaters tied for sixth and his tiebreaker was unfavorable, he did not advance to the Final. As for his fourth-place finish at the World Junior Championships, while it did not surpass Qi Yu’s silver medal from his junior years, it was still the best result achieved by a domestic junior skater since Qi Yu.
So, before Yu Jinghui, their JGP quota situation was even more dismal. At last year’s selection competition, only the first-place finisher was able to register for two Grand Prix events.
Of course, all of this is just the broader backdrop of domestic men’s figure skating right now. For Xi Ming at this moment, the most important thing is the competition at the JGP selection trials. After all, last year, Xi Ming didn’t even secure a single Grand Prix assignment. But now, he has regained the strength to compete.
“In that case, I’ll have to work even harder.” Xi Ming looked at Zhao Zhengchang, his gentle smile carrying full sincerity.
“Let’s work hard together.” Zhao Zhengchang gave Xi Ming an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
If there was anyone who knew best how much effort Xi Ming had put into climbing out of the depths, it was undoubtedly Zhao Zhengchang, who had been coaching him all along. He had always believed that this student of his would go far.