Competitive sports, how hard is it for an athlete to be upset? At the 2022 Table Tennis WTT Doha Star Tournament, the experience of the 35-year-old Croatian veteran Garcina winning the men's singles championship provides an answer paradigm for everyone.
Andrew Gasina, born in 1986, is 2 years older than Zhang Jike and Malone, but the results are really lackluster, looking through his resume, most of the matches are stopped in the round of 64, round of 32, round of 16, and sometimes even the qualification round can not qualify, so when he stepped into the Doha arena, it did not attract the attention of the fans.
However, it did not take long for everyone to receive one surprising news after another.
In the first round of men's singles, Gasina eliminated Kazakh fierce general Glasmenko, who had fought fiercely against China's world champion; in the second round, he eliminated the men's singles runner-up of the Swedish Xinke World Table Tennis Championships Moregard; in the third round, he defeated Huang Zhenting, the "first brother" of the Chinese Hong Kong team; in the fourth round, he eliminated Xue Fei, a famous national table tennis player.
In the semi-final battle, Gassina defeated the Swedish world champion Carlsson; in the final battle, Gassina went black to the end, pulled south Korean fierce lin Jong-hoon off the horse, successfully won the men's singles championship, and achieved a "zero breakthrough" in his career.
And when we delve into the process of Garcina's victory, we will find that it is really too difficult for an athlete to win the game!
In the first two rounds of the game, Gassina faced Glasmenco was a bitter 5-set victory, and the battle with Moregold was 0-1, 1-2 behind to finally achieve a reversal, playing very passively, until the last set of opponent mentality collapsed, he only exploded an 11-1 disparity, and this score is undoubtedly an important reason for Garcina's morale to increase later.
Immediately after the third and fourth rounds of facing two Chinese players, just straight players, and friends who have played ball know that there is a so-called "ball road xiangke" situation in the field of table tennis, Andsina has shown his adaptation to the straight-slapping style of play when he defeated Huang Zhenting, and then met Xue Fei, who played in the same type, which can be said to be excellent luck.
And even more fortunately, Garcina's strong opponent in the semi-final, Carlsson, actually withdrew due to injury!
Yes, as the only world champion opponent Garcina had to face, Carlsson suffered a neck injury not long after the first set, and was still ahead, and he could not recover after calling out the medical timeout, and finally burst into tears and had no choice but to give up, and this battle was even more crucial for Garcina's victory.
First of all, from the perspective of strength, Gassina does not say that he must lose Carlsson, at least it will not be easy to win, after all, the opponent is the world table tennis doubles champion and the fourth place winner in the World Cup singles.
As it turned out, Carlsson's retirement not only allowed Gassinabel to pick up a semi-final victory, but also brought direct help to his final victory.
Because Garcina and Lin Zhongxun are athletes who fight in a positional battle, as a result, Garcina, who participated in the semi-finals first, easily advanced, while Lin Zhongxun, who participated in the semifinals, and Aruna, an African fierce general who was "as powerful as an ox", bombed 6 innings, and the final started about two hours after the end of the game, and Lin Zhongxun was really tired.
In the end, the South Korean players had a visible level decline in the case of a 2-0 lead, and Garcina achieved a big reversal by winning 4 consecutive sets, which should be unreasonable to say that there is no physical and energetic factor at all.
Of course, this is not to say that Garcina is entirely by luck, but it turns out that an athlete who is not usually outstanding wants to win the game or even win the championship, which is indeed a comprehensive result of favorable timing and place, but we also wish the veteran more self-confidence after this battle and stage more wonderful duels for us: come on!