Recently, a 31-year-old male table tennis player received good news, that is, he was selected as the best athlete of the year by the national table tennis association. Prior to this, this person had defeated Zhang Jike, Ma Long, Xu Xin and Lin Gaoyuan, but last year he lost the Tokyo Olympics singles event, and the previous few days he did not qualify for the national championships.
But even so, winning the Asian Championship men's singles championship in 2021 has become an important chip for the veteran to be selected as the best athlete - this person is the South Korean table tennis team's Olympic main player Lee Sang-so, although he is 31 years old, he is still a high-level athlete from foreign associations that cannot be ignored, after all, there are very few people who have won so many national table tennis main forces, and Lee Sang-so does have two brushes!
Born in 1991, Lee Sang-so is currently the "big brother" of Korean men's table tennis, he debuted very early, in the London Olympic cycle when he beat Malone, when the Chinese media did not know him very well, the result of his name was mistakenly translated as "Lee Sang-so", until later slowly changed it.
In 2017, Lee Sang-so ushered in a peak of his career, that is, eliminating Zhang Jike and others at the Düsseldorf World Table Tennis Championships to reach the men's singles semifinals, and finally although he only won a bronze medal, this is also the best result of South Korean men's table tennis in the past ten years, and this battle also laid the position of "brother" in Lee Sang-so's team.
On the eve of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, Lee Sang-so originally locked the quota through the team selection competition, and as usual, he should be able to get singles tickets, but the Korean Table Tennis Association finally only let him sign up for the team and mixed doubles, and instead gave the singles qualification to Jung Young-sik, who lost in the selection competition, this decision also caused many people to be puzzled, calling out that Lee Sang-so was unfair.
After the Olympic Games, Jung Young-sik, who did not achieve good results, immediately declared that he was deeply ashamed, so he temporarily withdrew from the competition between the national team and the Houston World Table Tennis Championships, which was also regarded by many as an apology to his brother Lee Sang-so, but Lee Sang-so did not get upset because of this, and he was also a loyal person.
But then again, even if Lee Sang-so participates in the Olympic singles, he may not be able to perform better than Jung Young-sik, after all, the latter eliminated the world champion Pol, but later met Fan Zhendong really did not play. Although Li Shangsu won over Zhang Jike, Ma Long, Xu Xin, and Lin Gaoyuan, his record against Fan Zhendong was not as good as that of Zheng Rongshi (Zheng Rongzhi won over Fan Zhendong), so he did not seem to have lost anything.
But just as the so-called lost East Corner, harvested Mulberry Yu, after the Olympic Games, Lee Sang-so had excellent luck when he participated in the Asian Championships, and Chinese and Japanese masters were absent, and as a result, he defeated the World Champion Zhuang Zhiyuan of the Chinese Taipei team and others to win the men's singles championship, which is also a kind of disguised comfort!
After the arrival of 2022, Lee Sang-so, together with Jang Woo-jin and Jeong Young-sik, was directly selected for the national team by virtue of the world ranking advantage, but then did not play well in the national championships, and did not win gold medals in men's singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles. But even so, he continued to strive for qualification for the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships and the Hangzhou Asian Games.
It is also at this juncture that the Korean Table Tennis Association awarded Lee Sang-so the title of Athlete of the Year, which is undoubtedly an important encouragement for the veteran: so in 2022, can he once again hit the medals and even the championships of the World Series and Asian Competitions? Let's wait for the results of the Selection of the World Table Tennis Championships and asian Games of the South Korean team!