In addition to the title of the movie, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is also a plot that can happen in the real world. Sweden’s Almida de Val won a bronze medal with her teammates in the mixed doubles curling event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this week (8th). The 24-year-old female general is an engineer in her daily life, and her company also has branches in China. She was discovered by Chinese netizens in this competition and posted on social networks, which became a popular story.
In fact, De Waal has always been involved in curling. She won the gold medal at the World Junior Curling Championships in 2017, and she also won gold at the Universiade two years later. Last year, De Waal represented Sweden at the World Curling Mixed Doubles Championships and also won third place in the bronze medal match once morest Canada.
Off the field, De Waal is not only an engineer, but also holds a master’s degree in engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. She currently works for the Swedish branch of Akzo Nobel Paints, a Dutch paint company, which also has branches in China. According to reports, DeWall asked the company for leave in early January to prepare for the Winter Olympics, and will return to work next Monday (14th); in fact, DeWall even wrote on his personal LinkedIn account that he would play in the competition. Beijing Winter Olympics, so this can be regarded as an “open secret”.
In the group stage of the Beijing Winter Olympics Curling Mixed Doubles event, De Waal and his teammate Oskar Eriksson achieved 5 wins and 4 losses in 9 group matches and entered the semi-finals. Although the two lost 1:8 to the gold medal-winning Italian team in the quarter-finals, De Waal and Oskar Eriksson still beat Britain 9:3 in the third place, taking Sweden a bronze medal. As of the morning of Saturday (12th), Sweden had won 9 medals in this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics with 5 golds, 2 silvers and 2 bronzes, ranking 5th.
Source: Comprehensive foreign media
This article is by “Sportsroad“Originally published in “[Beijing Winter Olympics]Swedish engineer took leave to compete in curling mixed doubles to win bronze」