A few days ago, a self-media broke out that Wang Hao had resigned from the national table tennis team and quickly rushed to the hot search. On the evening of March 31, Wang Hao posted a long article on his personal social platform to refute the rumors: "I will not leave the national team! And bluntly said that he will accompany his disciple Fan Zhendong to the Paris Olympic Games. The domineering response made the national table tennis fans take a reassuring pill, and there was no need to worry about Fan Zhendong not having a competent coach.
Wang Hao said in a statement: I will not leave the national team. This year is the beginning of the Paris Olympic cycle, and the whole team feels the pressure of waiting for no time. During this period of continuous overseas competitions, the team was divided into several batches to compete in different arenas, and the team members who did not have the task of the game also continued to train in the closed, and the whole team was very hard. Because of personal formalities, I was temporarily unable to play abroad with the team after the Houston World Table Tennis Championships, so I have been training in Hainan with players from the first and second teams who do not have a game mission in China.
It is precisely through the joint efforts of this team family that Xiao Fat and I can get through the previous difficult bottleneck period, and continue to move firmly towards a higher goal after winning the Houston World Table Tennis Championships, the Singapore Finals, and the Singapore Grand Slam.
Both Chubby and I have higher dreams to achieve together. Finally, I also hope that the majority of fans will not believe in rumors, do not spread rumors, continue to support the table tennis project we love, please believe that I and our team will do our best for the honor of the motherland and the higher Olympic dream.
It is not difficult to see from the statement that Wang Hao not only debunked the rumors and will not leave, but also thanked the national table tennis team for its support, and also expressed his desire to lead Fan Zhendong to win the Olympic championship.
During his time as an athlete, Wang Hao won a total of 18 world championships, and the number of world champions in the men's national table tennis team was second only to Ma Long. However, he reached the Olympic final three times, and all of them missed the champions, which became the biggest regret.
In 2014, Wang Hao, who was plagued by injuries, retired from the army and returned to the Bayi team as the head coach of the men's team.
In the first half of 2017, Wang Hao entered the national table tennis coaching team through competition and became the head coach of Fan Zhendong. At that time, the 20-year-old Fan Zhendong was rising strongly, and was the youngest world champion of the Chinese table tennis team, and high hopes were pinned on.
Wang Hao and Fan Zhendong are both members of the Bayi team and have been brothers and teammates for many years. As a master brother, Wang Hao watched Xiao Fat grow all the way. Such an "intimate" relationship becomes much anticipated as a mentor-apprentice relationship.
However, Wang Hao, who has accumulated three years of grassroots coaching experience, has become the coach of the first team of national table tennis and the successor of the first brother of the men's team, or faces many unknowns.
For example, how to relieve the pressure on the highly anticipated core main force of national table tennis before the game, how to help the young and high-ranking Fan Zhendong withstand the strong impact of the crowd, how to prepare several solutions for the game, and what unexpected situations will occur in the game... For these open questions without standard answers, Wang Hao as a player has experienced hundreds of battles, but as a coach, he is more like a "recruit" and needs to be constantly explored.
At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Fan Zhendong likes to drink tea drinks provided by the Asian Games Village for athletes. In order to let the disciple drink at any time, Wang Hao always has two bottles of tea drinks in his bag, and sometimes he really has no time to take them, and he also has to tell the team doctor to help him get two bottles ready. He said: "I also have a lot of small habits when I was an athlete myself, if I feel very smooth, I can play well in the field, and now that I am a coach, I have to do things that make Fan Zhendong feel smooth and comfortable." ”
Wang Hao, who has riveted experience in "making up lessons" and has eczema, has been wearing a standing collar during the Asian Games, pulling the zipper to the top. After returning to Beijing, Wang Hao was diagnosed with "tension dermatitis."
After a year and a half of continuous debugging and running-in, Fan Zhendong's world ranking rose to the first place in the world, and the two masters and apprentices entered 2019 together. This year, the individual World Table Tennis Championships will be held in Budapest. At the beginning of the year, Wang Hao wrote on Weibo: "Ten years ago, I reached the top of the Yokohama World Table Tennis Championships, and ten years later I want to give you all the best." The accompanying picture is a picture of him and Fan Zhendong hugging. It is not difficult to see his expectations.
And no one expected that Fan Zhendong, who is rising strongly, will enter a bottleneck period in 2019. At the World Table Tennis Championships, he lost to teammate Liang Jingkun as a champion to stop the men's singles round of 16. Since then, Fan Zhendong has lost to teammates Wang Chuqin, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun, and has also lost many foreign games with Hugo, Francesca, Lin Yunru, Zhang Benzhihe, Zheng Rongshi and other foreign games in succession, falling into a "championship drought".
In the eyes of the outside world, Fan Zhendong fell into a low valley, and Wang Hao could not escape the blame. "Fan Zhendong needs to change coaches" Voice is very loud, and some people even say that "millennium old two" Wang Hao has misled people's children. For a time, Wang Hao was pushed to the cusp of the storm.
"The first time I experienced this kind of questioning as a coach, I was sometimes very uncomfortable and tormented." Faced with doubts Wang Hao digested himself. However, in his opinion, these things are the norm. "Coaches don't end up coaching for a year or two, and the longer they coach, the more they can reflect the ability and level of coaching."
However, the unprecedented difficulties made Wang Hao realize more. "After a long time, I slowly feel that the coaching ability needs time, and you have to constantly communicate with the athletes, keep groping, keep summarizing, and think in a down-to-earth way." Coaches and athletes must trust each other and communicate with each other in order to overcome difficulties. In Wang Hao's logic, the most stressful is always the athlete, and the coach sees through the problem and effective communication with the athlete is a two-way rush, and doing a good job will be more effective with half the effort."
In the doubt, he did not argue, silently doing the "old father" behind Fan Zhendong. Fan Zhendong finally won his first title of the season at the German Open in October 2019. Subsequently, he re-opened the "win the championship" mode, the Men's Singles, Men's Team Championship, the World Cup Men's Team Champion, the Austrian Open Men's Singles Champion, the T2 Diamond League Singapore Champion, the Men's World Cup Defending Champion... Breaking the short-lived bottleneck, Fan Zhendong returned to the peak.
Despite failing to surpass Malone in Tokyo, becoming the new men's singles champion at the Houston World Table Tennis Championships last year and winning the WTT Singapore Grand Slam title against Malone this year, Fan Zhendong announced to everyone that the new king is coming.
In Wang Hao's Weibo, in addition to his wife and children, the most frequent appearance is Fan Zhendong. From Xiao Fat's first men's singles world champion, to the Asian Games champion, and then to the World Table Tennis Championships champion, Wang Hao will record. This time it broke out that Wang Hao left the national team, and the fans said bluntly that Wang Hao left Xiao Fat and was the first to disagree.
On March 29, the International Table Tennis Federation announced its 13th week ranking, Fan Zhendong topped the list with 10598 points, and Ma Long, who was no. 2, was more than 3,000 points, ranking first in the world. Earlier, Fan Zhendong said that he ran forward, always worried about running fast enough and being caught up by others. Today, he has ridden the dust, but Wang Hao still requires Fan Zhendong to go out at 6:30 every morning to exercise in the morning, and he himself goes downstairs 10 minutes early. Wang Hao said that this is to hone the quality of The will of Xiao Fat. Because, in their hearts, there is a higher dream - the Paris Olympic men's singles champion.
Text/Marle
Photo: Xinhua News Agency, Weibo