On February 25, Beijing time, the International Table Tennis Federation announced a bad news to foreign officials, that is, the Chengdu Team World Table Tennis Championships, which were originally scheduled to be held in April this year, were postponed and changed to September 30 to October 9, and the reason was still the impact of the epidemic.
Prior to this, the 2020 Busan Team World Table Tennis Championships in South Korea suffered 3 postponements, and finally it was still forced to cancel, so many fans are also very worried: Will the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships repeat the same mistakes? But some netizens expressed their understanding of this decision: safety first! And we believe in China!
As we all know, since 2003, the World Table Tennis Championships have been completely split into team competitions and individual events, and everyone holds them every two years, but the former starts in an even-numbered year and the latter is an odd-numbered year.
After the end of the 2018 Swedish Team World Table Tennis Championships, South Korea was supposed to host the first World Table Tennis Championships in its history in 2020, just in time for the outbreak of the epidemic. Although the Korean Table Tennis Association and the International Table Tennis Federation tried hard to save the crisis, they finally had no choice but to announce the cancellation.
Since the last tournament was cancelled, the table tennis world has not held a team world table tennis championship for 4 years, which invisibly also gives the Chinese Table Tennis Association and Chengdu huge pressure.
In January this year, the International Table Tennis Federation officially confirmed that the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships will start on April 17, but in the past month, things have changed, and the competition has been postponed for 5 months, which makes people caught off guard and feels familiar: how similar to the Busan World Table Tennis Championships two years ago!
However, compared with South Korea, everyone still believes in China's epidemic prevention capabilities, so many people think that the second half of the year should be achievable.
In addition, the postponement is not necessarily a bad thing for the national table tennis: at present, the team is in a critical period of replacement between the old and the new, and more preparation time may be more conducive to the selection of the coaching team and the training of new talents. So can you see the World Table Tennis Championships on schedule in September? Let's wait and see: Come on, guys!