The happy and peaceful WTT Macau Tournament is over, and the national table tennis players have also been given a rare Spring Festival holiday, where they can have a time to get together with their families and friends, and then they will have a new assembly in 2022, and also prepare for other table tennis events in 2022, especially the World Table Tennis Championships team competition, which will start in mid-April. As you learned before the game, the Japanese table tennis team did not send any players to participate in the WTT Macau Tournament. In addition to the reason that the competition only has prize money and no points, another reason why Japanese players do not come to participate is that they have to participate in the domestic table tennis championships during the same time period of the Macau tournament. That is to say, the time conflict between the two competitions made them give up the opportunity to participate in the Macau Competition.
However, for the players of the Japanese table tennis team, the national championship in Japan is also more competitive, and it is also a very difficult and competitive event for the players. Especially for Tomokazu Zhang, as well as Hina Hayata and Mimako Ito, the main players of the Paris Olympic cycle, they are very important to the game itself. Here we are more mainly talking about Zhang Benzhi and Hayata Hina. According to the current schedule, the mixed doubles event of the Japan National Championships has been fought in four rounds, and Zhang Benzhi and Hayata Hina can be said to be both wind and rain, all the way forward. Although some games were a bit difficult to win, they still managed to bite and became the ultimate winners. Even if the opponents are stronger and stronger in each round, they still perform higher. In particular, in the match against the powerful Kobayashi Hiromi /Izusawa Kojika, the combination of Zhang Benji and /Hina Hayata, despite the stubborn challenge of the opponent, finally won five sets 3-2 (11-5, 11-9, 6-11, 3-11 and 12-10) and advanced to the quarterfinals.
Overall, Hina Hayata and Zhihe Zhang's personal singles strength is not bad, and the cooperation between the two people is also relatively tacit. For the Paris Olympic Games two years later, I believe that this young group that has grown up together will also have greater competitiveness. And we also know that the Japanese table tennis team took the lead in this project in the Tokyo Olympic cycle, and won the final first Olympic gold medal in the project, which made Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen's five years of efforts in vain. That is to say, in the competition of Ito Andani Hayabusa, they had been slightly behind Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen in several years of competition, but in the most critical battle, they won. To some extent, Hayata Xena and Zhang Benzhihe continue to break through themselves and continue to improve in the degree of running-in tacit understanding, and it is very likely to form a greater challenge to the mixed doubles combination of national table tennis.
Another point, Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin in the competition just ended in Macau, there were problems such as anxious mentality, unstable play, and too many mistakes on the field, so that they were eliminated early in the game. The other pair of main pairs Lin Gaoyuan and Wang Manyu, who are reserved for the Olympic games, also failed to go too far. From this point of view, the Paris Olympic cycle, even from Liu Guoliang to the national table tennis coaching staff, including all the participating players, are very hopeful to win back the Lost Olympic Gold Medal. However, Liu Shiwen and Xu Xin can still defeat all other partners in China in the mixed doubles field without cooperation and systematic training for a long time, which shows that the current young mixed doubles combination of national table tennis still has a certain deficiency in stability. This deficiency may not seem to be anything now, but it may become a harbinger of the national table tennis losing the mixed doubles gold medal again in the Olympic arena.
Therefore, in the face of the increasingly stable performance of Zhang Benzhihe and Hayata Xina, as well as the reality of increasing competitiveness, Liu Guoliang, the head of the national table tennis coaching team and the table tennis association, still has to have a more prepared understanding of the mixed doubles project itself, and also have to make more difficult preparations, and at the same time, we must also think of more ways to strive to win this gold medal back at the Paris Olympic Games. I hope that this outstanding performance of Hina Hayata and Zhang Benzhihe can bring a kind of pressure to the national table tennis team at the same time, but also bring motivation, and everyone should work together to win the Olympic mixed doubles gold medal.