Chapter 76: Second-class Merit, Straight To The Top
The night before the competition is very hard to endure.
Under the influence of pre-competition anxiety syndrome, the competitors will uncontrollably feel nervous, anticipation, excitement, apprehension, with various emotions intertwining in their minds.
The brain will become extremely active, extremely excited, and sleepiness will be completely dispelled.
But tomorrow’s competition requires sufficient sleep to achieve the best condition for the matches, so they have to force themselves to sleep.
In this extremely conflicting situation, one can imagine how hard this night is to endure.
However.
Whether others find it hard to endure is unclear, but anyway, Chen Jun slept very comfortably that night.
The night passed.
The tense and stimulating grand competition, where competitors are blood-thrilled and fight regardless of their lives for company honor, thus kicked off in full swing.
On the morning of the first day of the competition, the command post organized all competitors to line up for the opening ceremony.
Regiment Commander Wang led a group of leaders from the regiment and personally came to the site for mobilization, giving another shot of chicken blood to the already excited competitors.
After the regiment commander finished speaking, it was the political commissar.
Only after the two finished speaking did the main person in charge of the grand competition come up to briefly announce the rules of the competition and the judging method for the final first place.
Simply put.
Each project will select an individual first place, and team races will select an individual first place by company. Finally, all individual first places are added up, and the company with the most becomes first in this year’s mid-year competition.
The rewards include team and individual third-class merits, as well as the honor brocade banner of “Competition Sharp Knife Company.”
And the most tempting reward—
The opportunity to represent the 702 Regiment to the division for a higher-level division grand competition.
The division grand competition represents higher difficulty, and also higher-level honors. Outstanding individuals and teams all have a chance to win second-class merits.
Second-class merit is an incredible thing; for soldiers, it’s like a super tonic pill.
A warrior who wins second-class merit can be directly promoted to officer, and an officer who wins it can directly advance in rank, the kind where a platoon leader jumps straight to company commander.
Among the competitors representing the company in the grand competition, the highest military rank is platoon leader; officers who are already company commanders cannot participate again.
So both officers and warriors crave to go to the division for a shot.
Losing doesn’t hurt, winning means takeoff.
The temptation is too great!
The Seventh Company competitors, including Chen Jun, were all stimulated after hearing the rewards, feeling like their whole bodies were on fire, full of energy.
They couldn’t wait to rush to the venue, take down all opponents, and claim first place.
Since the regiment competition is organized by company, with self-screening done within the company first, all competitors attending the competition are essentially finalists.
So the regiment competition has no semifinals or quarterfinals; every match is a final.
This means every competition project is held only once, determining first place in one go, with no second chance for a revival match.
Under this mechanism of one match per project, the fourteen projects were scheduled in sequence.
One match after another.
No simultaneous projects.
This is more favorable for competitors participating in multiple projects, as they won’t have to give up one due to time conflicts; it sounds like good news.
But in reality, one after another without rest is a challenge for competitors in multiple projects.
Can stamina recover?
Probably not!
After all, even for the most awesome person, after going all out in a 5 kilometers, then going all out in 10 kilometers, stamina definitely won’t recover.
So it forces each company’s competitors to readjust the projects.
Or selectively go easy in some projects to save stamina, then go all out in advantage projects to seize individual first place.
And how to arrange it most effectively and scientifically tests the team leaders and captains’ understanding of the competition.
It’s just like the coach in esports, whether they can BAN properly to get the desired lineup, which concerns their ability level.
The specific order of the fourteen projects was announced by the person in charge on stage.
They are:
Pistol 80m precision shooting.
Rifle 150m precision shooting.
200m rapid movement shooting.
Sniper rifle 500m precision shooting.
Vehicle-mounted machine gun precision shooting.
3km light load sprint team.
5km light load cross-country team.
10km light load cross-country team.
400m obstacle individual.
10km cross-country with load individual.
Armored vehicle mountainous terrain obstacle course.
Weapon disassembly and assembly.
Battlefield first aid.
Grenade throwing.
After announcing the order of the fourteen projects, the competition person in charge announced twenty minutes for each company to go down and arrange for competitors to wear equipment and gear.
Twenty minutes later.
The competitors from each company for pistol 80m precision shooting reassembled here on the large parade ground and were led by designated personnel to the shooting range for the competition.
Other personnel are not allowed to enter the shooting range and can go to the designated company spectator area to watch.
The person in charge said to prepare equipment and tools, but after each company hurriedly returned to camp, the first thing they did was not preparation work.
Instead, they gathered everyone in the tent for an emergency meeting to discuss competition arrangements.
The order of competition projects had never been publicly announced before; it was first revealed at the just-ended mobilization meeting, so everyone now knew the competition order.
Each company originally thought that to allow competitors time to adjust, the three major common competition subjects—military gymnastics, shooting, and comprehensive—would definitely be spaced out.
After all, each company’s situation is the same, under the restriction of only ten competitors per team.
In the company, good shooters will try to participate in all shooting projects, and strong runners will try to join all running projects.
If the three major subjects are spaced out, competitors can have enough time to rest.
But now after the official announcement of the competition order, everyone realized that shooting, military gymnastics, and comprehensive were actually lined up one after another.
This is deadly.
It’s like a bolt from the blue, stunning everyone.
Shooting and comprehensive are not big problems yet; consecutive matches don’t consume much stamina, just mental energy, making people somewhat fatigued, with slightly declining results in later projects.
But the military physical events in the middle are the real killers.
Those five projects lined up one after another—if a competitor participates in all, even if they are a stamina superhuman monster, they absolutely cannot hold up.
And military physical events, as the core competition subject, occupy five of the fourteen projects.
No one wants to give up this big piece of meat.
Even grabbing one more requires going all out.
How to adjust the competitors for the five military physical events became an extremely critical matter.
The lists of project competitors have already been submitted, and the competition rules allow only one temporary replacement per team, which is extremely precious and cannot be used lightly.
It must be reserved for supplementing a competitor who might get injured and have to miss.
So to achieve the best possible results in the five military physical events under the established rules, there’s only one path left.
That is to make tactical abandonments!
