On the day of Bei Jiao’s competition, just as the woman fully dressed and ready to go was about to step out the door, Bei Jiao blocked the doorway entirely, attempting to stop her from leaving.
“Don’t go,” he said expressionlessly, “I’ll compete well, as long as you’re not sitting there watching.”
Jiang Ran also replied expressionlessly, “Move aside.”
Bei Jiao: “Nope.”
She tried to push him aside, but he stood there like a wooden board, unmoving in front of the door: “No way! You don’t even know what ‘nervousness when approaching home’ means! Your presence will affect my performance. The thought of you watching me makes me nervous! Don’t go!”
As for his grasp of the correct meaning of this idiom, he definitely couldn’t have passed the Chinese exam in the college entrance exam.
Unable to move him, Jiang Ran directly used her feet, stepping on his abdomen with her slipper-clad foot and pushing backward: “You performed well back when you played basketball, didn’t you?”
“That’s different! Xie Yu and the others were so bad!” Bei Jiao had no choice but to grip the door frame with both hands, “But who knows what monsters there might be today!”
“Move aside!”
“Nope!”
Ten minutes later, Bei Jiao sullenly climbed into the passenger seat of the three-million-yuan luxury car and fastened his seatbelt.
Turning his head to look at the composed woman starting the car, he pressed his lips into a thin line and, after thinking for a moment, emphasized in a compromising tone: “Fine, you can come, but if I don’t win a place, you can’t criticize me.”
Jiang Ran stepped on the gas and drove the car out of the garage, keeping her eyes straight ahead while calmly saying with a steady voice: “You’d better win a place. Otherwise, I will definitely criticize you. If you can’t even get a place in an amateur slalom competition after following me for two months, what kind of slalom are you doing?”
“…”
…
This year’s event was the second national amateur slalom competition hosted by various Sunac locations as the organizing unit.
What is an amateur slalom competition? It’s non-competitive. First, the competitors aren’t professional parallel giant slalom athletes. Second, the competition rules stipulate that only non-competitive regular ski boots (i.e., not competitive hard boots) can be worn, and only commercially available carving boards that aren’t professional competitive models can be used.
The purpose of this competition is to promote the popularity of carving within the country. After all, among the three styles of snowboarding, carving, which is purely technical sliding, is less popular compared to freestyle and terrain park features.
When Bei Jiao arrived at Sunac, checked in, and received his competition vest, he learned that he would be competing against a total of seventy-eight people today.
…Seventy-eight!
Standing on the flat area in front of the beginner slope at Sunac, he looked up at the staff busily setting up the gates and tugged at his friend Huang, who had just finished handing out vests and was now idle, complaining, “I’ve never even gone through a gate before. How can I compete with others? Don’t you think Jiang Ran is just making trouble? Why didn’t she bring Song Die instead—”
“Shh!” Huang whispered, “Sister Ran said we shouldn’t mention her name until after your competition. What if someone overhears? It would be so embarrassing if you don’t make the podium!”
Bei Jiao: “…”
He moved his lips slightly, silently cursing a few swear words.
Then he turned his head and stared intently at the spacing between the gates on the hill, uncertain whether he could do well in this—
Actually, over the past two months, while he was high-speed sliding on the slopes, there were times when he had to make emergency detours around beginners who had fallen or obstacles ahead, and he had done a good job of controlling his route and timely avoiding them.
Jiang Ran said that this was a specific manifestation of being able to control the route, so going through the gates should not be difficult for him.
But in a competition, besides weaving through the gates, he also needed to choose the shortest route possible while going around them—obviously, there’s a difference between taking a wide turn and a tight one, just like in a running race, even a fool knows to take the inside track.
“Just follow your usual route control, try to stay as close to the poles as possible without hitting them or losing speed, calculate the distance to the next pole and plan your route in advance, and don’t slam on the brakes.”
The familiar female voice sounded in his ear.
Bei Jiao turned his head with such force it felt like he might break his neck and saw the woman, who had just been the subject of his complaints, standing calmly behind him with a tilted head looking at him.
She wasn’t wearing snow gear today, just regular jeans and a loose down jacket over them. She was wearing a pair of fuzzy gloves and a light-colored knit cap, her hair loose, standing behind him and tilting her head to look at him.
Among a sea of ugly purple competition vests, her white down jacket and white gloves made her look fuzzy and exceptionally noticeable.
Bei Jiao was silent for a few seconds.
“How did you get here?”
After asking, he watched her struggle to pull out a staff badge from her down jacket pocket, a different color but the same model as Huang’s, and hang it around her neck with the lanyard.
She looked at him with a beaming smile: “I’m a judge.”
…
This competition wasn’t entirely a JSBA-style technical slalom event, so during the competition, there was no strict scoring for the sliding posture. The rules were simple and brutal: whoever didn’t miss any gates, didn’t go off the course, and finished in the shortest time would win.
Parallel giant slalom events are generally completed in groups of two. In large-scale events such as the Winter Olympics, where hundreds of people participate, the preliminary rounds are usually completed through timed runs—
For example, in a large-scale event with two hundred participants, the preliminary rounds involve each participant sliding once, with the top thirty-two fastest times advancing to the next round.
Starting from the thirty-second round, the competition is divided into pairs of two for head-to-head matches. At this stage, the race duration is not considered, only the current match result matters, with the first to reach the finish line advancing to the next round.
Finally, this continues in the same way, with pairs competing against each other until the top three of this competition are selected.
This competition only had about seventy participants, which was far fewer than in typical large-scale events, so the usual timed elimination ranking rules were omitted from the beginning. Instead, the competition started directly from the thirty-second round rules, with participants drawing lots and competing in pairs.
The competition started with the draw. Those who drew well-known skiers looked gloomy, finally realizing that this was a competition where luck and skill were equally important.
Except for Jiang Ran, Bei Jiao basically didn’t know any of the other celebrities in the carving circle, so he didn’t care which opponent he drew—
After getting the draw slip and confirming that he was placed in the tenth group, he took the cable car up the mountain.
Upon reaching the summit, he sat on the ground to retie his ski boots and warm up. He didn’t care where his opponent was or whether they looked impressive. He just kept staring in the direction of the judges’ stand, watching the woman slowly making her way to her seat with her hands in her pockets…
She looked relaxed. When she reached the judges’ stand, a male skier, who looked a bit older and also wore a judge’s badge, very chivalrously pulled out the middle chair for her. She smiled at him with her profile and chatted happily before sitting down.
“…”
Bei Jiao, filled with inexplicable irritation, withdrew his gaze.
Ten minutes later, the competition quickly began.
Since there was no timing segment, the two timers usually installed on the parallel giant slalom track were also omitted. The competitors stood at the starting platform that had just been set up, and when the order was given, they could start—
The first group of competitors set the tone for the entire competition. The competitor on the blue track lost control of his turn at the second gate and, moving too fast, fell and flew out, crashing into the guardrail!
People around gasped in alarm, and the host also noisily exclaimed into the microphone: [How did he fall! Rescue team!]
Bei Jiao silently breathed a sigh of relief: It seemed that not everyone in the competition was so skilled.
Leaning against the mountain railing with his arms crossed, he coldly watched the first few groups finish their runs—
The course wasn’t very long, and the sliding was fast. Even considering the time wasted on various unexpected incidents, by the time it was the tenth group’s turn, only half an hour had passed.
Bei Jiao heard the host loudly announce his stage name through the microphone: “One of the Earth Dog competitors.”
He was wearing a face guard, perfectly concealing all the emotions in his eyes—seriously making his way to the starting platform amidst the audience’s laughter and his opponent’s puzzled gaze.
As long as he wasn’t embarrassed, the embarrassment belonged to others.
Bei Jiao had never seen his opponent before. The opponent was wearing a black slim-fitting snowsuit, of medium height, and a bit on the heavier side. He was using a GRAY Red Tree board, which was already the heaviest, stiffest, and widest in the carving board category, naturally made for carving. Jiang Ran also had one, placed in the guest room, right by his bed.
Bei Jiao took a quick glance to the side and then turned his gaze back, adjusted his face guard, lifted his helmet slightly, and placed both hands on the starting platform’s railing.
His eyes were focused on the sliding route he had planned in his mind earlier.
At this moment, the surrounding noisy sounds seemed to disappear all at once. Bei Jiao placed both hands on the starting pole, slightly crouched his body, and took one last look in the direction where Jiang Ran was on the hillside—
He cleared his mind of all distractions, leaving only the sound of his heartbeat in his chest.
At the sound of the whistle, his heart suddenly tightened!
The boy standing at the starting pole pushed off with both hands, shooting forward like an arrow from a bow. He could only hear the sound of the wind and the loud noise of the snowboard gliding over the snow!
【They’re off! Neither competitor is particularly fast at the start! Bei Jiao is slightly ahead!】
At the first gate, because he was unfamiliar with the route through the gates, he could see out of the corner of his eye that he was slightly half a body length behind his opponent—
However, by the second gate, his route became more tentative and closer to the gate!
At this point, he was catching up to his opponent!
【We can see that the Earth Dog competitor is still adjusting his route, he’s catching up!】
The change began at the third gate. Starting from the exit of the third gate, he seemed to have determined what he thought was the best route through the gates, and at the same time, his previously somewhat extended and tense body relaxed!
【Ah! From the third gate onwards, the Earth Dog competitor’s sliding posture has changed—JSBA! It’s JSBA! Earlier, because his center of gravity was high, I couldn’t really tell what kind of sliding he was doing!】
Amid the host’s excited shouting and the audience’s watchful eyes, everyone saw the teenager, who had been neck and neck with his opponent due to the route, suddenly fold his body downward—
As a result, his center of gravity lowered, the edge of his board tilted higher, and his sliding speed suddenly increased!
Every time he passed a parallel gate, you could see his hand lightly brushing the snow surface like a dragonfly skimming water!
On the outside of the turn, because the board’s edge bit deeply into the snow, the snow kicked up by the tail of the board flew over two meters high, directly crossing this track and smacking the opponent, who was already half a gate behind, right in the face!
Caught off guard, the opponent was directly affected by the snow dust in his face, which disrupted his competition rhythm. At the penultimate gate, he slid off the course and gave up the race himself!
The scene erupted in an uproar!
At the same time, Bei Jiao had already smoothly reached the finish line. Because of the high speed, after passing the last gate, he lightly pushed off with his back foot, performed an emergency stop with a hand touch to the ground while sliding backward, and then lightly jumped when his speed decreased, with his snowboard catching the front edge, he came to a stop!
【Congratulations to the Earth Dog competitor! He wins this match!】
Under the power of the microphone, the new stage name resounded gloriously over the icy mountain!
Bei Jiao: “…”
Good thing school starts in a few days, so he won’t have to come back to the icy mountain and embarrass himself.JPG.
…
Bei Jiao’s competition ended in the quarterfinals, and this time it had nothing to do with luck—
Guangzhou Sunac is naturally the territory of carving skiers. There are many experts in this circle here. Except for the less than ten top skiers remaining in Harbin Sunac and Chengdu Sunac combined, this place is basically the most valuable competition station.
It was already quite good for him to reach the quarterfinals.
After the competition, he didn’t feel much regret. He bent down to take off his board, his mind still in a daze. He looked back at the judges’ stand on the hillside, where the advanced and beginner slopes met on flat ground. After hesitating for a moment, he picked up his board and took the magic carpet up to that flat area.
Standing on the magic carpet, hearing the sound of it running, he began to worry that Jiang Ran would find fault with him, even thinking: Maybe I should just go back?
The magic carpet moved slowly forward.
At this time, the quarterfinals had just ended, and with the semifinals approaching, the competitors were given a half-hour break—
Well, carving is quite tiring when done seriously, requiring simultaneous effort from the waist, legs, and abdomen. The top competitors had already competed in several rounds and deserved a proper rest.
While the competitors rested, the judges sat nearby chatting.
Bei Jiao got off the magic carpet and immediately spotted Jiang Ran, who was sitting in the middle surrounded by many male skiers like a star among moons. She had thrown her gloves aside, one hand supporting her chin, and the other holding a hand warmer someone had given her, pushing it around playfully.
He approached from behind with a blank expression.
At the same time, the male skier sitting to Jiang Ran’s left, who had pulled out a chair for her earlier, was checking off the list of semifinalists. When he saw the name “One Earth Dog,” he sighed, “That’s a shame.”
Jiang Ran leaned over to take a look. Upon seeing the name his pen was pointing at, she let out a meaning-laden snort.
The male skier tapped the paper with his pen: “This earth dog isn’t bad, kind of interesting. I could tell from the first run that he was a complete novice at passing gates. He was still testing the route on the first two gates—anyone who had tried the gates at Harbin Sunac once wouldn’t have to test it during the competition—”
As soon as Bei Jiao heard this, he wanted to cover the man’s mouth, thinking, “Oh no, this woman is definitely going to start mocking me.”
Unexpectedly, leaning closer to the male skier, Jiang Ran simply held the hand warmer and said, “Mm,” looking quite docile as she nodded her fuzzy head, “Yes, it was his first time.”
She actually spoke like a normal person?
Bei Jiao was shocked.
At this moment, the male skier hadn’t yet detected the certainty in Jiang Ran’s tone and assumed she shared his analysis. Sighing, he continued, “After figuring out the pattern, his route planning, pressure application, and timing of standing up were all pretty good. His sliding posture was also quite standard. He probably just had bad luck losing to Speed Star earlier—”
“No,” Jiang Ran said calmly, “Speed Star is an old hand, been sliding for years. What can this puppy, who’s only been sliding for two months, compare to?”
“…Two months? He’s only been sliding for two months? And he’s this good?” The male skier was also taken aback, and then finally realized, turning to look at Jiang Ran, “Wait, what’s going on? Do you know him?”
Jiang Ran let out an “Ah,” blinked her eyes, and paused for a moment.
“Of course I know him!”
Her lips curled into a smile, her eyes crinkling with laughter, a single sentence startling everyone around.
“He’s my apprentice, you know!”
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