On March 7, Beijing time, the first Grand Slam tournament of WTT (World Table Tennis Professional League) was played in Singapore. As one of the "Four Slams" at the highest level of the WTT Series, the competition attracted many outstanding players to participate. The Chinese team also dispatched the main force and will face the challenges of various masters.
Xiang Peng appeared in the qualifiers with a wild card and passed the first round of thrilling clearance. Courtesy of WTT
The competition is fierce, can the national table tennis be covered?
The WTT Singapore Grand Slam lasts for two weeks, with qualifying from 7 to 9 days, and after a one-day off, five individual events will be played from 11 to 20. The tournament has 2,000 points for the championship, which is comparable to the Olympic and World Championships, and the prize money for winning the championship in singles is also $125,000, second only to the WTT World Cup final.
Such a high-level event naturally attracted the world's top players to participate in the competition, except for a few famous players who did not register due to injury, all the top players in the world participated. The Chinese team also sent a 16-man squad including all the main players, including the men's team's Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun, Xu Xin, Lin Gaoyuan, Wang Chuqin and the women's team's Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Liu Shiwen to qualify for the singles main competition by virtue of the world ranking, the men's team rookie Lin Shidong and He Zhuojia, who won the women's singles runner-up of the ITTF World Tour Finals, won the singles wild card, and xiang Peng, the U19 men's singles champion of the World Youth Championships last year, and the "Triple Crown King" of the women's event. Kuman was awarded a singles qualifier wild card. In the first round of the men's singles qualifier on the 7th, Xiang Peng narrowly defeated Iran's Alamyan 3-2 to advance to the second round.
In addition, in the men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles events, the Chinese team sent Fan Zhendong/Wang Chuqin, Sun Yingsha/Wang Manyu and Wang Chuqin/Sun Yingsha to compete for the championship in five individual events.
The National Table Tennis Regrouped in Hainan after the Spring Festival holiday. Image source: Table Tennis World Magazine
With the Asian Games in mind, who can stand out?
On the day of the opening of the WTT Singapore Grand Slam, the Chinese Table Tennis Association also released a public consultation draft of the Asian Games selection method. According to the measures, this competition will become an important basis for the selection of the national table tennis team for this year's Hangzhou Asian Games.
According to the selection method, Chinese athletes who won the men's and women's singles championships in this competition will be directly shortlisted for the Asian Games team lineup and occupy one seat in the two singles seats for men and women. In addition, the world rankings for the period from April 4 to 10, the 14th week of this year, are also an important condition for selecting the Asian Games squad. In the team competition, the three Chinese athletes with the highest rankings in the world in singles this week, or one male and one female with the highest singles ranking born after January 1, 1999, can be directly shortlisted for the team, while one male and one female athlete with the highest ranking in singles this week will be eligible for another singles qualification (if the candidate is the same as the WTT Singapore Grand Slam champion, it will be postponed to the second highest ranking athlete).
Qin Zhijian, secretary general of the Chinese Table Tennis Association and head coach of the Chinese men's team, who is supervising the battle in Singapore, said that due to the very high gold content of the Grand Slam on this station, the fierce competition in singles is even higher than that of the Olympic Games, so the singles champion can be directly shortlisted for the Asian Games lineup. At the same time, the points of this station are very high, "if you want to compete for the qualification for the Asian Games, you must strive to achieve a good place in this difficult and competitive competition." ”
Sun Yingsha had a mediocre record at the WTT Macau Championship in January this year. Image source: WTT official Weibo
How does Sasha perform in all three categories?
In this competition, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha, two "post-00s" celebrities of national table tennis, will be in three events and strive to become "multi-champion". Among them, Sun Yingsha, who debuted at the world number one in singles and determined the performance of the new head coach, is a major attraction.
After the end of the Tokyo Olympic cycle, Sun Yingsha's former head coach Huang Haicheng left the team due to family reasons, and the coach of the men's team, Chen Xuan, temporarily helped Sun Yingsha prepare for important events such as the Houston World Table Tennis Championships and the WTT World Cup Final. At the same time, the Chinese Table Tennis Association and the national team have also been looking for a supervisor coach for Sun Yingsha. In the training camp after the Spring Festival, former world champion Qiu Yike officially became Sun Yingsha's new head coach.
Qiu Yike led the Sichuan team to win the women's team championship at the 2017 National Games, and after entering the Chinese women's team at the end of 2018, he was in charge of the world champion Zhu Yuling, and then mainly responsible for potential young players. According to Li Falcon, the head coach of the Chinese women's team, Qiu Yike was selected as Sun Yingsha's head coach on the one hand because of her proactive and creative coaching style, and the communication between young coaches and young players is relatively smooth. For the new task, Qiu Yike said that pressure and motivation coexist, "Sun Yingsha is very spirited, and hopes that I can help her achieve her bigger dreams." ”
Sun Yingsha, who ushered in the new head coach, said that she believes that Qiu Yi may bring new things to herself, "looking forward to making progress with him in the Paris Olympic cycle." "This time, the two masters and apprentices have joined hands in the international arena for the first time, and if they can achieve good results, they will greatly boost morale."