A TEAM UNITED BY A VISION

The Chinese Paralympics ice hockey team was going through their paces in the Guoxin Sports Center ice rink in Qingdao, Shandong province on July 10. They completed the workout which included shooting and tactical formations guided by the loud directions of their coach.

Most of the team members had previous experience in a range of disciplines, including cycling, taekwondo and other sports. For new arrivals to ice hockey, certain adaptations are a must including the most obvious, staying on the ice for several hours a day. The tactical planning involved turning defensive formations into a rapid and fast-moving attack giving the opposition little time to adjust. The aspect here is a unified approach. For this they often deploy the gegenpresse. This sees teams press their opponents, especially when the puck is in opposition territory. This, if it works, disrupts plans for a counterattack and gives the team chasing the puck an advantage.

The forward line acts like the first line of defense. But it must be done in unison for it to work.

Xu Jinqiang used to be an archer. He says he fell in love with this challenging sport, despite the need to wear helmets, neck and chest guards and skates every day. "Paddling ice sleds and waving ice hockey sticks to play on the ice makes it special. I hope the players can work together to make the Paralympics team more powerful and achieve excellent results at the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games," he says.

Stepping into the freezing training rink, one could feel the cold air thrashing the face. Most of the team members are from Shandong and Hebei provinces with an average age of 24. The boys wear different colored team strips, use straps to fix themselves on the ice sled, and divide into four groups to practice. Due to the high speed, the players on the field sometimes collide and fall. "These are commonplace for us", says Cui Yutao, who plays in the forwards. "During the game, falls and injuries are common things, but for the honor of the whole team, these minor injuries are nothing at all."

On the other side of the court, the reflexes of three goalkeepers are being tested by the coach. Dozens of pucks are hit by the coach at close range at different angles, and the goalkeepers must react quickly to save, and repeat the save hundreds of times a day. The puck often hits the wall at the side, making a loud noise. It could be eye-watering if it hits flesh.

Ice hockey is a physically demanding game, and each team member has to rotate after five minutes of high-intensity confrontation training. The three goalkeepers have three different sitting positions to adapt to different tactical arrangements.

In 2015, Beijing won the bid to host the 24th Winter Olympics and the 13th Winter Paralympics, but ice games were not popular in China at the time. At the end of 2015, in order to implement President Xi Jinping's instruction to "let 300 million people on ice and snow", the China Disabled Persons' Federation held the first training camp for the Chinese Paralympics ice hockey training squad in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, which marked the official establishment of the Paralympics ice hockey game in China.

Ice hockey is one of the two collective events in which China's Paralympics teams participated. At the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympic Games in South Korea in 2018, the Chinese wheelchair curling team won the gold medal, which encouraged the athletes of the ice hockey team. At the 2018 World Para Ice Hockey (group C) Championships, the team qualified for group B of the championships. Later, in the 2019 tournament group B competition, the team went down to Russia 3-1, and came third in the group.

Through international competitions, they have narrowed the gap with the world's strongest teams. With Russian Nikolai Sharshkov as the head coach, the players have developed a true team spirit after a focus on hard physical training.