BXBX NOVEL Chapter 113 - The First Championship
Chapter 113: The First Championship
It’s not that everyone of them had incredible sprinting abilities, but because they had gone for the easy route.
For example Zhang Zhou Wei, who had signed up for the 100-meter run. He entered the competition grounds with his injury, taking about twenty seconds to drag his twisted ankle to the track. What event was easier than this? Shot put required three rounds, which would take at least half an hour.
During the preliminaries for the 100 and 200-meter dashes, simultaneously began the first field event, high jump. The placement of the set up on the track had been in a spot where the contestants from the 100 and 200-meter dashes would not reach.
The academy had a standard track. In addition to the short duration of the sports meet, everything operated at this level, with two events happening on different sides of the track at the same time.
The men’s high jump also didn’t have much contestants, hovering at around 20 or so. They didn’t separate into groups and entered immediately into finals.
Once the men’s high jump ended, the women’s commenced. Jiao Yan Ran had signed up for this category, so all the classmates from their department had been watching her stage and cheering her on from the stands.
Jiao Yan Ran was the last competitor for the women’s division. The order was unconventional, as it wasn’t based on a lottery draw, but it followed the athlete’s number plate, which had been specially arranged.
Why?
Because she was the only female contestant using the sponge mat. Asides from two guys from the men’s division who had also use it, she was the third one in the entire field.
The referee had known of Jiao Yan Ran ahead of time, and arranged her to come last so they could conveniently set up the sponge mat.
There were several ways to jump over the pole, the most common method being the leap style, and the back-jump style. Everyone knew the leaping method, but the back jump method was much less common; the kind of actions nobody you know would know, but everyone on TV seems to.
The technical requirements for the ‘Fosbury flop’ or the backward flip were very demanding. Everything else aside, 90% of regular people wouldn’t even have the courage to jump with their back facing the pole.
Besides, under regular circumstances, an ordinary person would never perform pole-style high jump exercises, unless you skipped rope as a kid. And not even the kind that double dutches twenty or so times, but the actual high-intensity kind.
There weren’t that many girls participating in high jump, around a dozen or so. The first round’s height was set at 1 meter, which immediately disqualified 10 of them. The five girls who could pass the 1-meter height were the only ones who passed onto the top six, including Jiao Yan Ran who had asked the referee to raise the bar to 1.3 meters in the first round.
At the beginning of the second round, the first contestant was the last member from the last round, Jiao Yan Ran. For the same reason, as it was too troublesome to remove the sponge mat.
Raising the height to 1.40 meters, which was the standard of a third-tier national athlete, Jiao Yan Ran succeeded with flying colors.
Removing the high jump mat, the pole height got lowered to 1.10 meters. The other contestants continued to advance, with only three girls remaining who had passed the 1.10 height.
By the third round, only one contestant was left after clearing the 1.20-meter height.
Once the pole was raised to 1.3, this contestant gave up.
The referee looked at Jiao Yan Ran, who also forfeited, taking the championship.
Under completely irregular conditions, the women’s high jump finals were done.
The animation department’s students on the bleachers stood up to cheer, but there was no surprise in their voice. Last year was about the same process.
The Academy of Fine Arts, which had a total of zero-high jump specialty females, Jiao Yan Ran being a former national volleyball player was already godsend.
What’s more, Xiao Yan Ran also had experienced being on the provincial high jump team, so she had proper credentials to crush the scene.
Although the competition was doomed from the beginning, Jiao Yan Ran still received copious amounts of applause from the animation department for winning a championship for their team.
Not surprisingly, the animation department will receive three gold medals this year, because Jiao Yan Ran still had two other categories to compete in; the women’s long jump and the women’s triple jump. Her chances of winning were very stable.
However, life was ever-changing, and accidents appeared very quickly.
At three in the afternoon, the men’s shot put finals began. As the third to appear, Meng Fan’s first throw landed a score of 12.25 meters. This was the level of a second-tier national athlete. He basically had the championship on lockdown.
This was a real f*cking surprise for the students in the animation department!
“Iron hero!”
“Iron hero!”
“Your elder will always be your elder!”
Classmates on the stands from the animation department were deliriously screaming.
Of course, not everyone was surprised. For example, Jiao Yan Ran and Wang Ya Nan who had seen Meng Fan during his practice, and most of the contestants who had entered the competition alongside him. They had all seen Meng Fan throw the weights.
Hearing the results from the referee, Meng Fan was ecstatic. It wasn’t because of his 12-meter result, but because the throwing accuracy from his [God-Tiered Pitcher] task was too powerful.
Before he threw the weight, he had measured for a distance of 12.25 meters so that when he threw the weight, it landed on the number of his birth date, with no discrepancy!
Under the roaring cheers from his animation classmates, Meng Fan left the throwing area.
The remaining players from the first round were cast, with the best score being 9 meters. Meng Fan remembered this guy had been one of the students Jiao Yan Ran was coaching the day before. It seems her coaching had been very effective, as his distance had grown from 8 meters to over 9 meters.
Aside from this guy, there were three other contestants who scored over 8 meters. If this had been last year, they would have won the gold.
Unsurprisingly, these three had all received coaching from Jiao Yan Ran.
In the second round, Meng Fan forfeited his turn.
Third round, he forfeited again.
Meng Fan did not believe that anyone from this group could break the standards for a second-tier national athlete.
If they could, then Meng Fan would bitterly accept his fate.
When the competition ended, Meng Fan heard an alert go off in his mind.
The level of the Hua Xia Art Academy’s college games would definitely not reach the level of provincial or national standards. Hence, anything below the provincial level had to be judged by the System separately.
After starting up the [I am a Champion] deciding mechanism, the results came out very quickly.
“Ding! Decision has failed. You’ve failed to obtain any honor points.”
In this regard, Meng Fan had made the psychological preparations, but it wasn’t like he didn’t gain anything at all from this. He noticed that after the failure of this decision, the system would increase the next decision’s success rate by 10%. If he failed again next time, his success rate would accumulate.
In other words, even if the competition was below the provincial standard, as long as he could accumulate the success rate, he could still gain honor points.
As for the odds of getting it, it would really depend on the system’s mood; unless he could collect 100%.
It was alright. At least he was able to obtain an important piece of information.
Once the shot put finals ended, the award ceremony followed directly.
The award ceremony was presented in front of the central podium. It was also broadcasted on the radio, which to be honest was simple for Meng Fan, who had been awaiting the presentations behind the makeshift podium.
He had never experienced this before in his life! From a child, he had eaten art competition awards for lunch, but this was his first time receiving anything in a sports category!
If it had been before, Meng Fan would never have believed he could win a championship for a sports competition; he probably wouldn’t even qualify for a community competition. Even after receiving the system, he did not expect his first championship to be from shot put.
Who didn’t have dreams of being a champion? He was ecstatic. When the radio announced his name with the ‘champion’ title in front of it, Meng Fan would have jumped onto the podium if he hadn’t been so concerned about the stand supporting the weight of his jump.
The award distributing faculty member approached him, put the medal around his neck, shook his hand, and posed for a photo.
Meng Fan could not control his stupid laughter throughout the entire process, hence everyone around him had begun to laugh as well. The photography department’s student who was responsible for documenting the event took several blurry photos, questioning his profession.
“Buddy, can you stop laughing? Hahaha, I am at least the top student of the photography department, if I can’t even take a photo that’s not blurry, I’m scared I’ll be asked to leave the program. Hahaha!”