Chapter 165: I Have to Put on an Act Again (1/2)

Chapter 165: I Have to Put on an Act Again

Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The first day of training had ended; or, more specifically, the four hour afternoon training session had ended.

Exhausted, the athletes walked towards the canteen, talking about Dai Li on their way.

”This Coach Li sent by the national team is so young. I think he is only a few years older than me!”

”It does not look like Coach Li was ever an athlete. I really cannot figure out since why the national team has coaches as young as him.”

”Maybe he got this position through a connection!” Xiaotian Xin said.

”That goes without saying. A coach on the national team who is under thirty must have gotten his position through connections!” Guohong Niu curled his lip disdainfully, then said, ”You saw today's training. It was even less than we usually do. I am afraid that this Coach Li is just a mediocre coach on the national team who was only sent here because of his poor performance.”

The athletes did not trust Dai Li. Age was indeed Dai Li's biggest shortcoming. It had been fine when he was still training youth team athletes; however, at his age, Dai Li would definitely be looked down upon by adult athletes.

This was quite common in careers that required a lot of experience. For example, if a guy wanted to find more information about his antique vase, and he found two appraisers—a young guy who was just over twenty and an old man over sixty—the guy would definitely believe the older man's appraisal. He might think that the young man could make mistake because of his lack of experience, which would make his appraisal inaccurate.

Another example would be the doctors. If a young doctor who was only twenty-four or twenty-five was sitting in the consulting room, most of the patients would think he was just an intern.

However, if an old doctor with grey hair and reading glasses was sitting there, people might think he was a specialist, even if he was not. In television shows with doctors, there was always the cliché that young doctors had been refused by the patients because they were considered inexperienced.

Another example was a group named the ”Four Miraculous Doctors,” who had deceived people in over ten different provinces. Each day they sold medicine on TV programs by pretending to be medical specialists. Sometimes they were doctors of Miao Nationality (an ethnic group belonging to South China, and is recognized by the government of China as one of the 55 official minority groups.) Medicine, who could perform things like ”acupuncture, prescriptions, sputum removal, and asthma treatment”; the next day, they would be doctors of Traditional Mongolian Medicine, shouting claims of their ancestral ”Heart & Brain Prescription from Traditional Mongolian Medicine.” Their cover would constantly change.

Even though everything was a lie, there were still many people who chose to believe and got deceived by them. Almost all the swindlers had grey hair and wore wire-framed glasses. Had they been young guys who were in their twenties, nobody would have believed they were miraculous doctors, no matter how professional they pretended to be.

This rule was applicable to coaches as well. It was very difficult for young coaches to gain the trust of their athletes. If the coach was younger than the athletes, more trouble would be caused. If the athletes thought they were more experienced and competent than the coach, why would they obey his or her orders!

Those who were admitted to Tsinghua University were elites among the students. Most of them were arrogant, and would not be completely convinced unless a coach came and showed some real skills, even if they were experienced.

Dai Li was young. He was only a few years older than them. Furthermore, in the first afternoon of training, Dai Li had arranged some basic training instead of some specific training aimed at the weaknesses of each athlete. Dai Li had planned to make an observation first, then formulate different training plans for each athlete. However, to Dai Li's surprise, his training arrangement for the first afternoon had been despised by the athletes.

The scornful mood of the athletes was shown during the second afternoon of training.

Whether the coach was respected by the athletes or not could easily be seen in how the athletes trained. For tough coaches who were very authoritative, athletes would do their best to finish all of their training, even if they were completely exhausted. If the coach was unpopular, on the other hand, the simplest training tasks would be performed by the athletes carelessly.