The Japanese Table Tennis National Championships are in full swing, but it is very unexpected that it is not present in the mixed doubles arena - before that, Ito Mimachi won the gold medal in the mixed doubles of the Olympic Games, and also won the mixed doubles championship of the Japan National Championships for three consecutive years, resulting in the abandonment of mixed doubles at the World Table Tennis Championships last year, and the participation in the event at this year's National Championships.
In response to this, Ito Has officially responded, bluntly saying that the mixed doubles partner suitable for her is Mizutani Hayabusa, and now Mizutani Hayabusa has retired, so she gave up participating in the project to specialize in women's singles and women's doubles, and hopes to beat the Chinese team in the future! So is the national table tennis ready to fight?
As we all know, Ito is a very versatile athlete with great strength in all sports:
In the women's singles, she has beaten all the active world champions of national table tennis except Chen Meng; in the women's doubles, she has won the silver medal in the final of the world table tennis championships for two consecutive years; as for the mixed doubles, she not only beat Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen to win the Tokyo Olympics, but also won the gold medal of the Japan National Championships for three consecutive years.
However, the reason given by Ito Toei this time to abandon the mixed doubles is actually not sufficient, because her mixed doubles partner in Japan is not Mizutani Hayabusa, but Morien Masataka, so even if Mizutani Hayabusa chooses to retire, Ito Canomachi can still continue to compete with Morien Masashi.
However, these two people are already the mixed doubles triple crown of the national championships, and it is indeed a bit boring to participate in the competition. Probably because Ito's mixed doubles results have become proud of the table tennis world, so she herself does not have much pursuit, so now she has decided to withdraw from the competition of this project and focus more on the other two projects.
In addition, Ito and Hina Hayata were also the women's doubles champions of the national championships, but they did not win gold medals on the world stage, but lost to the national table tennis combination for two consecutive world table tennis championships, so Ito Mimako still cooperated with Hayata Hina to compete in the women's doubles event of the National Championships.
As for singles, Ito's current best result in international competitions is the Olympic Games and the World Cup runner-up, and the World Table Tennis Championships have not reached the final four, which is obviously not tough enough. She has reached the top twice in the championships, but last year and the previous year lost to Hina Hayata and Yoshinori Ishikawa respectively, so this year naturally she will continue to fight.
So after abandoning the mixed doubles, will Ito's women's doubles and women's singles results improve? Let's wait for the results of this year's Japanese Table Tennis Championships!