In the recently gone 2021, the national table tennis player Zhou Qihao is undoubtedly a veritable dark horse in the team, as an athlete ranked 100 away in the world, he has defeated Liang Jingkun, Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and other world champions in a row, won the favor of Liu Guoliang and the coaching staff, won the ticket for the Houston World Table Tennis Championships for himself, but the result was early, which is regrettable.
Now that 2022 has arrived, and the national table tennis is about to prepare for two major events - the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships and the Hangzhou Asian Games, will there be new non-main dark horse players appearing this time and getting valuable quotas? Can Zhou Qihao, who was a "layman in foreign wars" at the Houston World Table Tennis Championships and many international competitions in the past, still be reused by Liu Guoliang and the coaching staff?
Zhou Qihao's performance in 2021 must have been well known to everyone. In fact, as early as 2020, Zhou Qihao made a big splash in the team's direct competition, defeating two Olympic champions Xu Xin and Ma Long in a row, but unfortunately lost to Fan Zhendong in the last stage and failed to get tickets for the Busan Team World Table Tennis Championships.
However, due to the South Korean side announced the postponement and suspension of the 2020 Busan World Table Tennis Championships, so Zhou Qihao did not lose anything in the end, and as a result, he seized the opportunity in 2021 and finally won a singles championship in the direct race, and soon after took the last train of the Houston Single World Table Tennis Championships, finally joining the main ranks.
However, in the battle of Houston, Zhou Qihao played the worst record of the five fierce players of the national table tennis men's team, and in the second round, he broke into the sand and lost to the 40-year-old German world champion Pol - because Zhou Qihao has suffered many fiascos in international competitions before, often practicing qualifiers can not get out of the line, so many fans also hate iron and steel to call him "civil war insider, foreign war layman".
As we all know, the foreign combat ability of the Chinese players is the most valued by the coaching staff, and it is precisely because of Zhou Qihao's previous poor performance that it has caused fans and friends to ask: In the new season of 2022, can he still keep his hard-won position as the main force in the team?
At present, in the case of Ma Long and Xu Xin fading out of the first-line arena, Zhou Qihao is indeed in a more delicate situation, a bit of a "high, low" feeling:
On the one hand, Zhou Qihao's overall strength is not bad, and being able to defeat the main force of the world champion many times shows that his skills are indeed very strong, but his performance in foreign wars is obviously worse than that of Fan Zhendong and others.
But on the other hand, the comprehensive performance of most of the non-main players in national table tennis is actually not as good as Zhou Qihao, which also gives Zhou Qihao more room for maneuver and time to make up for his shortcomings.
In addition, Zhou Qihao's loss to Pol in the World Table Tennis Championships is also a kind of "luck" to some extent, because normally, any national table tennis player who is eliminated by Pol is not a cold goal - if Zhou Qihao was invincible at that time, then his weight in the hearts of the coaching staff will definitely be greatly reduced, but his defeat at the hands of Pol is not much to blame.
However, in the fiercely competitive Chinese table tennis team, even the main players such as Lin Gaoyuan also lost the Busan team world table tennis championships last year, and Zhou Qihao is now much worse than Lin Gaoyuan in terms of ranking and performance, and it will not be surprising if he is brushed down.
At present, the thing that deserves Zhou Qihao's happiness is that Ma Long and Xu Xin have faded out of the battlefield of regular competitions, so if these two veterans do not participate in this year's World Table Tennis Championships and Asian Games competition, Zhou Qihao is still likely to continue to stay in the main lineup, and with the strength of national table tennis, it is not very difficult to win the championship, so even if he does not play a game, he may lie down to win the world championship title.
Before that, Yu Ziyang had not played in the team World Cup, but still realized the dream of world champion, it was indeed extremely lucky, could it be that Zhou Qihao also had to star in this script? So can other non-main players of national table tennis become a new dark horse and not give Zhou Qihao a chance? The suspense is still there, let's wait and see: come on, guys!