On May 14, Beijing time, the Chinese Table Tennis Association officially announced that the list of players representing the Chinese table tennis team in the 2024 Paris Olympics was announced.
The national table tennis Paris Olympic squad is as follows:
Men's Singles: Wang Chuqin, Fan Zhendong
Women's Singles: Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng
Mixed Doubles: Wang Chuqin/Sun Yingsha
Men's team: Wang Chuqin, Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun (P card)
Women's group: Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi (P card)
In the men's team, Tokyo Olympics player Xu Xin retired, and then P card player Wang Chuqin became the main force. Wang Chuqin is ranked No. 1 in the world, and at the Saudi Grand Slam that ended last week, he won three crowns and became a well-deserved new brother in national table tennis, and at the same time, he and Sun Yingsha also ranked first in the world rankings, and is the absolute trump card after Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen, so there is no controversy about Wang Chuqin's participation in the Paris Olympics as the first place in the trials.
Relatively speaking, Fan Zhendong has been controversial recently, although he qualified for the singles and team competitions as the top two selections, but it has been difficult to win the championship in various competitions in the past year, and his state is up and down and even less stable than the veteran Ma Long, even compared with Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan, there is not much advantage, but fortunately, Fan Zhendong accumulated a lot of points in the early stage of the Paris Olympic trials, so he finally stood out. The Olympics are getting closer and closer, and if Fan Zhendong can't get out of the current predicament in time, I am afraid it will be difficult to win the men's singles championship at the Olympics and achieve the great cause of the Grand Slam.
Veteran Ma Long is a three-time Olympic men's team and two-time Olympic men's singles champion, although he has long passed the prime of his career, but he has maintained his good form, but unfortunately he still failed to achieve a counterattack and was not selected for the singles list. Of course, although Ma Long has also lost several foreign battles in the past year, it is more than enough to compete in the Olympic team event with his strength and experience.
Liang Jingkun was selected as a P card athlete because of his repeated stable performance in the competition and his overall strength.
The women's team has not changed much compared with the last Olympic Games, only Liu Shiwen retired, and the other three Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng, and Wang Manyu were all shortlisted for the Paris Olympics. Sun Yingsha is now the world's No. 1 and although she failed to win the Saudi Grand Slam, there is no doubt that she is the favourite to win the women's singles title at the Olympics. Chen Meng's form picked up, and he grasped his fate with his own hard work, and won the final moment in the battle for Olympic singles qualification with Wang Manyu. If Chen Meng defends his title in Paris, it is entirely possible.
Wang Manyu is a P card player in the Tokyo Olympics, three years ago the team national table tennis opened the P card, replaced Liu Shiwen with Wang Manyu, and finally Wang Manyu got on the women's team championship podium of the Olympic Games. In the Paris cycle, Wang Manyu once led in the competition with Chen Meng, but the Saudi Grand Slam at the last moment made her efforts in an Olympic cycle go to waste, Wang Manyu, who was originally the most promising to qualify for singles, lost a lot of points early, and Chen Meng successfully won the championship trophy all the way, and finally Wang Manyu could only participate in the team competition again.
Wang Yidi had reached second in the world ranking at the peak, and the women's doubles formed with Chen Meng were also very combative, so getting the P card was no surprise for Wang Yidi, but I don't know if the national table tennis will start the P card like in the Tokyo Olympics at the Paris Olympics, so that Wang Yidi can get on the championship podium of the Olympic Games?