When Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen are mentioned, many fans will think of the 2010 World Table Tennis Championships in Moscow.
In the women's team final of the Moscow World Table Tennis Championships, Ding Ning, the first to appear, faced Singapore's Feng Tianwei, as a result, Ding Ning led 2-0 in the big score, 8-3 in the third set, only one step away from victory, but suddenly became conservative, was won by Feng Tianwei for three consecutive sets, and was tragically reversed by Feng Tianwei.
Liu Shiwen, the first singles player who then appeared, carried this great psychological pressure, facing Singaporean veteran Wang Yuegu, and finally lost the game by a score of 1-3, which led to the Chinese team falling behind 0-2.
Although the third appearance of the veteran Guo Yan helped the Chinese team to pull back a city, chasing the score to 1-2, but at this time Liu Shiwen's mentality has completely collapsed, in the fourth set between the two sides of the first singles match, Liu Shiwen lost 2-3 to Feng Tianwei, the Chinese team has no chance to defend the title.
After losing, Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen couldn't help but shed tears, and after returning to China, Ding Ning said in an interview that he must personally win this championship in two years!
Two years later, at the Dortmund World Table Tennis Championships, the Chinese team and Singapore did meet again in the final, this time, Ding Ning still played the lead, her opponent was still Singapore's Feng Tianwei, but this time, Ding Ning never gave the opponent a chance, defeated the opponent with a score of 3-1, and helped the Chinese team win the first point.
Li Xiaoxia and Guo Yue, who appeared later, also lived up to expectations, defeating Wang Yuegu and Li Jiawei respectively, and the Chinese women's table tennis successfully won the championship!
Ding Ning also fulfilled his promise two years ago and won the championship with his own hands.
But why didn't Liu Shiwen play in the final?
You know, at the Time of the Moscow World Table Tennis Championships, Liu Shiwen began to play as the first singles player after entering the knockout round, why did Liu Shiwen not appear in the final two years later?
After the defeat at the Moscow World Table Tennis Championships, Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen, as the parties to the loss, both of them were hidden by the national team, and in the 2010 Asian Games, neither of them qualified for singles, and even in the team stage of the Asian Games, the two only appeared in some insignificant matches.
However, in the match against the South Korean team, Liu Shiwen once again lost the foreign war, losing to South Korea's Shi Hejing.
In the next year's World Table Tennis Championships, Ding Ning defeated Feng Tianwei 4-0 in the quarterfinals, and then defeated Liu Shiwen, who had beaten herself five times in a row in the semi-finals, to reach the final, in which Ding Ning defeated Li Xiaoxia, who was two years older than himself.
At this point, Ding Ning completely came out of the shadow of Moscow. For Liu Shiwen, however, she has not yet ushered in the opportunity to prove herself.
In fact, Shi Zhihao, the female table tennis coach at the time, did not give up Liu Shiwen, and still gave Liu Shiwen a chance, hoping that Liu Shiwen could prove herself.
In the final of the women's team at the 2012 Asian Championships, Shi Zhihao once again sent Liu Shiwen to appear, but unexpectedly, this time Liu Shiwen lost to Yu Mengyu of Singapore! This caused Shi Zhihao to begin to feel distrustful of Liu Shiwen.
Having lost consecutive team matches, Shi Zhihao no longer dared to risk letting Liu Shiwen play against Singapore.
Therefore, in the final of the women's team at the 2012 Dortmund World Table Tennis Championships, Shi Zhihao changed the lineup, although he still shot Ding Ning to take the lead, but he never let Liu Shiwen play in the final.
Objectively speaking, the national team has indeed given Liu Shiwen a lot of opportunities, Liu Shiwen has won eight Asian Cup opportunities in her career, six World Cup opportunities, which is indeed very rare in the history of national table tennis!
But unfortunately, although the national team gave Liu Shiwen so many opportunities, but in the key competition, Liu Shiwen could not break through her psychological barriers, and even in the mixed doubles final of this year's Tokyo Olympic Games, Liu Shiwen, who is 30 years old, can also collapse in the final, and she can not beat the Japanese combination without the first mixed doubles crown!