On December 17, Beijing time, the 2021 World Badminton Championships continued in Spain. Zhao Junpeng, the national men's singles "only seedling", suffered a reversal in the case of taking the first match point, and lost to India's Lakrenshya in three sets and missed the final four. Although he failed to win a world championship medal, Zhao Junpeng still conquered the fans with his outstanding performance and was praised as "honored despite defeat".
At this badminton World Championships, Chen Long and Shi Yuqi, the two absolute main players who represented the Chinese team in the Tokyo Olympic Games, were absent for their own reasons. Under such circumstances, the men's singles game was not optimistic before the match, and even some media predicted that the three players were likely to be eliminated in the first round. But Zhao Junpeng, Lu Guangzu and Li Shifeng all proved themselves with victory, especially Zhao Junpeng, who broke into the quarterfinals and made him the farthest in the men's singles of the national feather, and he was only one point away from the medal at one point. Although the results of the collective failure to qualify for the top four are difficult to satisfy, Zhao Junpeng uses his strength to declare to the world that even without Lin Dan and Chen Long, the men's singles of Guoyu still have a good competitiveness.
Speaking of Zhao Junpeng, he had the name of "Lin Dan's successor" many years ago. The same players cultivated by the Bayi badminton team are also left-handed players, and the two have a lot of similarities. From 2015 to 2016, Zhao Junpeng showed a strong upward momentum, the Youth Games champion and the national championship champion made him the favor of the famous coach Li Yongbo, and at a young age, he got a large number of opportunities to play in the World Badminton League. At the end of 2016, Zhao Junpeng defeated a number of famous players including Chinese Taipei's "one brother" Zhou Tiancheng at the Macau Badminton Open to win the men's singles championship, and was once seen as having the potential to impact the Olympic quota. Unfortunately, in the following years, due to various reasons such as injuries and illnesses, Zhao Junpeng's growth did not meet expectations. The 25-year-old Zhao Junpeng finally ushered in an outbreak at the end of 2021, proving himself with the results of the top 8 of the World Championships, and the future is still worth looking forward to.