Just this Tuesday, the ITTF released the 2021 year-end world ranking list. Since there have been no matches in the world in the recent week, this week's year-end overall rankings and last week's rankings have not changed much, and on the men's table tennis side, the top five are still Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, Xu Xin, Hugo Calderano and Zhang Benzhihe. On the women's table tennis side, it is still Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Ito Mimachi, Wang Manyu and Wang Yidi who occupy the top five rankings in the world. Indeed, as a world table tennis singles champion like Wang Manyu, due to the premise that Ito Misato gave up the qualification for the World Cup, he failed to achieve the goal of winning the championship in the WTT World Cup, and even failed to go through the first round, so he also missed the best opportunity to catch up with Ito Mimachi ranking points, continue to occupy the fourth position in the world, and failed to achieve the goal of surpassing Ito's world ranking in 2021. This has also become a regret for Wang Manyu personally and the entire team of national table tennis.
To some extent, Wang Manyu's 2021 season is indeed full of luck and full of gains. But in this kind of luck and harvest, there is also regret. Saying that Wang Manyu's 2021 has luck and harvest is because she still maintains a strong competitiveness in Liu Shiwen, sun Yingsha and Chen Meng have been in the 2019 and 2020 seasons, under the premise of having a good performance in the world arena, they have encountered a bottleneck period, and once at the end of 2019, there were psychological and state ups and downs. At one point, he even failed to qualify for the world table tennis team competition that was produced at that time. It can be seen that at the end of 2019, Wang Manyu once walked through a trough period in his career. Fortunately, with the cooperation of Xiao Zhan's guidance and Wang Manyu's own efforts, she not only quickly passed this stage of declining state and unstable mentality, but also quickly won a rebound. The most important thing is that the world table tennis team competition was cancelled after several postponements. This also gave Wang Manyu a chance to breathe. As a result, she had recovered her best form and even had a new promotion before the Olympics arrived.
Therefore, when Liu Shiwen was in poor condition in the Olympic Games, affected by injuries and psychology, and failed to withstand the pressure in the mixed doubles field and finally won the championship, Wang Manyu's opportunity came. She not only stood on the team stage for Liu Shiwen, but also completed the task well. He also showed excellent competitive form and won his own highlight period after winning the team competition at the Tokyo Olympics. While Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha were still busy fighting for the Olympic championship, she had already begun arduous and dedicated training under the leadership of Xiao Zhan, first winning the National Games and then standing on the highest podium of the women's singles champion at the World Table Tennis Championships. Passing chen meng and Sun Yingsha two levels in a row, that is, defeating the new Olympic singles champion and runner-up to win the championship, but also making Wang Manyu's world table tennis championship full of gold.
However, for young players, the road to growth does often have twists and turns. Just when everyone thought that Wang Manyu, who won the Women's Singles Champion of the National Games and the Women's Singles Champion of the World Table Tennis Championships, would shine, she faced Du Kaixuan's targeted research in the WTT World Cup and suffered a first-round exit. In the long run, this is not only a regret in luck, but also a stage that Wang Manyu must go through in the process of becoming the world's top master. That is, because he won Chen Meng, defeated Sun Yingsha, and defeated Ito Mimachi more and more steadily, he could not think that he was invincible. Because once you stand on the podium of the world championship, especially the podium of the world table tennis singles champion, when the opponent matches you again, the mentality changes, and the state is easy to play the kind of momentum that is to fight you and pull you off the horse. Obviously, the defeat of the WTT World Cup allowed Wang Manyu to face such a problem in a short period of time and could be solved at the first time.
Although in the last edition of the world ranking at the end of 2021, Wang Manyu still cannot surpass Ito Mimako and occupy the top three positions in the world ranking, but for Wang Manyu, everything is just right. When the moon is full, it is a loss, and Wang Manyu is far from being satisfied. She also needs to withstand the pressure, relax herself, learn to lower her position, and start over in the Paris Olympic cycle with Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha. Only in this way can Wang Manyu usher in a new breakthrough. We also believe that in 2022, even if Ito Mimachi will go all out, Wang Manyu will be able to surpass her ranking. This requires the efforts of Wang Manyu, and also the joint efforts of Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Wang Yidi and Chen Xingtong, let us witness the 2022 of the female table tennis girls.