Chapter 87

"Jingnan Province Women's 200m Freestyle Dark Horse Competition."

"The champion had only practiced swimming for a month. Is she a genius or just a coincidence?"

"The captain of the Three Flowers Team said this champion is well-deserved."

"17-year-old girl from Gumula Village, Lvshan City bravely won the Jingnan Province Women's 200m Freestyle Competition championship."

When little seven stood on the award podium, bowed her head low, a middle-aged bald man who was a provincial leader put the champion medal on her and handed her a shiny gold trophy.

The trophy was engraved with small words "Jingnan Province Women's 200m Freestyle Champion" and sparkled under the lights.

The second place winner, Li Enya, was awarded her medal and trophy by a city leader next to her.

The third place winner was Ouyang Yan, the girl with the tall nose bridge who looked a bit mixed-race, who was ranked fourth in the preliminaries.

Only the top three places received rewards in the formal competition.

Then the competition's sponsors came over to give them bonuses, one red envelope and signboard per person.

Little Seven's signboard read 15,000 yuan, with the sponsor's store name written below.

The camera kept shooting and she showed a big smile on her face, even more excited than when she had received the trophy and medal.

When receiving the trophy and medal, she still had a somewhat bewildered reaction, not quite believing that she had become the champion, thinking it would be like the preliminaries where although she was first in her group, she could still end up ranked further back.

It wasn't until the sponsor came over to give the red envelope and she received the light signboard that Little Seven had a sense of reality, that she had truly won the championship. Now her smile was silly and foolish.

When the leader had awarded her the trophy and medal, Little Seven's smile had been dignified, aloof and full of poise. Now she revealed the appearance of a silly 17-year-old girl that made people want to take her home.

In contrast, the second place winner Li Enya maintained just a faint smile on her face the whole time.

She had not expected to lose and for her, anything less than first place was losing.

Moreover, she had lost to an unknown girl that she had never even heard of before. She hadn't paid much attention to her opponent's information before the match. Her coach had only mentioned it in passing and she hadn't taken it to heart or even knew until now that the girl standing on the podium slightly taller than her was called Su Xiaoqi.

Su Xiaoqi's time was 1 minute 56.48 seconds. The time of this year's National Games women's 200m freestyle champion was 1 minute 56.21 seconds. Li Enya's time was 1 minute 56.56 seconds and Ouyang Yan's was 1 minute 56.59 seconds. So it could be said that there really wasn't much difference between the second and third place finishers, less than a blink of an eye, while the gap between first and second place was still less than a second. But in this kind of speed competition, a single second represented an immense difference.

As a reserve member of the national team, Li Enya had come just to compete for experience in her hometown match as support. She had never imagined such an outcome would occur at all.

Ouyang Yan had a much better mentality. She also hadn't thought she could beat Li Enya. Now that Li Enya had become second place, she could still get third place, better than her fourth place result in the preliminaries. This was improvement.

The others did not have time to marvel at the dark horse Su Xiaoqi. If you fell out of the top three, you no longer had a name.

At the awards ceremony, all kinds of press releases had already gone out.

With today's advanced information, especially various major WeChat public accounts, both locally authoritative ones and some that piggybacked on news events, the organizing committee's official public account also soon released an article.

Plus videos.

Now pre-competition interview footage of the athletes could be utilized.

There were also interviews after receiving the awards. The post-match interviews were much more formal, with many more microphones and many more cameras.

Reporter A: What are your thoughts after winning the award?

Su Xiaoqi: Thanks to Coach Wu Peirong for teaching me to swim and leading me into the world of swimming. Thank you to my family for giving me a body suitable for swimming.

Reporter B: It is said that the competition champion can directly enter the national team trials. Will you participate?

Su Xiaoqi: The timing may not work out. I'm about to start university soon.

Reporter C: What was your original motivation for participating in the competition?

Su Xiaoqi: The top prize money was very high.

Reporter: ...

Reporter D: Blah blah blah...

Su Xiaoqi ran away...

At this time, a group of audience members squeezed out. Little Seven took the opportunity to slip away among the chaos.

She was not very good at talking. Although she was no longer too afraid of being stared at by the cameras now, after saying a few sentences she still felt it was better for her to keep quiet. She always felt it was too easy to make mistakes saying too much in this type of occasion.

After the match there were still some things to take care of. Little Seven said goodbye to Liang Jiajia and the others, and they went back first.

Liang Jiajia was extremely satisfied. It turned out her Little Seven teacher was the champion! Although she admired her teacher and thought her teacher was amazing, having her actually win the championship felt different, like her idol had been affirmed and her own judgment had been validated. She and her group of students were chattering excitedly. After all, swimming was not considered a particularly popular or common sport. This was their first time watching a competitive swimming match. With the end of the competition they still felt fired up, let alone that the person they were supporting had turned out to be the champion! They were happy.

Liang Huaying was also unexpectedly surprised. She originally had a good impression towards Little Seven, only accompanying her daughter here to support and spend more time with the little girl, seeing what she was interested in her extracurricular activities. She never imagined that the small private tutor she happened to find turned out to be the swimming champion of the whole province... She had originally planned to give her daughter's tutor a red envelope when the lessons ended. Now she felt like that red envelope amount should be increased some more. Her original plan seemed inadequate.

It was said that the top finishers of the competition would have a celebratory dinner together.

As the hard-fought hosts of the main venue, the whole Three Flowers Team still performed badly as usual in the formal competition. If not for the dark horse Little Seven squeezing in to participate, they probably would not have been able to eat comfortably at the dinner.

Little Seven was very unfamiliar with this kind of dinner party. She had never participated in one before. After showering and changing clothes, she went to find Coach Wu.

Her aunt had her wear the new outfit bought for participating in today’s competition, a pink babydoll top with jeans.

Short hair in little pigtails.

She was not very tall at 165cm, but her proportions were exceptionally standardized. The jeans showed off her straight, long legs.

Standing together with the famous Little Hu Mingxia, Li Enya, and the exotic-featured Ouyang Yan, she did not lose out at all.

Wu Peirong did not actually have the qualifications to participate in this kind of dinner party, but she was Little Seven’s only coach. Little Seven brought her along and she was not assured leaving Little Seven alone either, so she came as well.

The top three finishers and a bunch of leaders sat at one table.

It felt a bit like a banquet, with people continually coming over to toast the leaders at Little Seven's table. No one asked them few younger girls to drink though.

Little Seven wasn’t even eighteen yet.

Li Enya was around the same age. Ouyang Yan was a bit older at nineteen.

At the dinner, Li Enya was still quite eloquent and no longer had the dissatisfied expression from the awards ceremony. At this time, she affectionately called those leaders uncle this and uncle that, skilled at getting along.

It seemed she had participated in this type of dinner party several times already.

Little Seven felt very uncomfortable with the situation of eating with a group of strangers. If not for having her coach sitting next to her, she would have felt even more self-conscious. All she could do was maintain the aura buff she carried with her, silently focus on eating. Only when someone asked her a question would she respond. Otherwise if no one spoke to her she would just steadily eat her meal. Fortunately the food on the table suited her tastes—crab and sticky rice, lobster, sea cucumber soup were all delicious. Little Seven ate a lot.

In contrast, Ouyang Yan and Li Enya did not eat much. As professional athletes they had dietary restrictions to adhere to.

Little Seven ate boldly and generously. Coach Wu Peirong also had not expected this situation. Of course, Wu Peirong was very happy herself today, especially happy. She toasted the leaders around one by one like a triumphant mother hen.

The captain of the pitiful Three Flowers Team could only show respect and courtesy to her now. After all, if she had not stubbornly fought to squeeze a slot for someone else to participate in the competition, the Three Flowers Team would have completely failed. Maybe due to nerves, Zeng Tingting's performance in the formal competition was about the same as her prelim result. She was eliminated in the first round. Everyone else improved their times greatly in the formal event, so naturally if you did not improve, you regressed instead.

Li Si from Meng City lost to Ouyang Yan and became fourth place. But with only the top three places awarded, she did not even make an appearance on stage and reportedly went straight back to Meng City. After eating, Little Seven sent Coach Wu back first before returning. Coach Wu got drunk.

At the dinner party, Little Seven added a lot of WeChat contacts and was a bit confused as she didn't recognize any of them. She earnestly asked every one of them for their name and added a note.

As a result, her WeChat contacts filled up with a pile of people labeled with various official titles.

Finally, the competition was over. Little Seven thought this could be considered a major event, worth posting about on Moment.

She received many photos Liang Jiajia had taken of her. She chose one of herself receiving an award, holding up a trophy and medal in one hand and a paper plaque representing the 15,000 yuan prize money in the other, smiling foolishly.

"I won today."

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