By May, the Chinese table tennis team is about to regroup and start a new round of preparation. The ITTF has confirmed changes to the world ranking rules on the official platform and will officially adopt the new rules in the 18th week, a change that is like a thunderbolt for some players in the national table tennis. According to the rules, individual athletes will be completely removed from their initial points and only calculate the results of the competition from the beginning of the 2021 season to the present, minimizing the impact of the epidemic on table tennis events. In the current world rankings, Fan Zhendong, Chen Meng, Ma Long, Sun Yingsha and others occupy the top two places in the men's singles and women's singles.
According to the results of the 2021 season, these players can still get a large number of points, but for Xu Xin, Lin Gaoyuan, Liu Shiwen, Chen Xing and others, the world ranking is likely to be outside the 50th. This point change has made some players in the national table tennis somewhat panicked. From the perspective of the 2021 season, the most important event is the Tokyo Olympics. Ma Long and Chen Meng won the men's singles and women's singles championships respectively, while Fan Zhendong and Sun Yingsha won the runner-up. In the subsequent World Championships, Fan Zhendong won the first men's singles championship of his career, while another women's singles strongman Wang Manyu suddenly emerged and snatched the women's singles championship trophy in the midst of strong opponents.
These two major events are an important basis for the ITTF to calculate the points of each player in the 2021 season. From the 2021 season to the present, several of the highest gold-containing competitions, the national table tennis coaching staff have also sent these main players to participate. Therefore, players such as Ma Long and Fan Zhendong in the men's singles event and Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu in the women's singles event will basically not be affected by the new rules of the world ranking. But in addition to these main players, other players in the national table tennis team will encounter unprecedented challenges. In the men's team, Liang Jingkun and Wang Chuqin have performed steadily in the past two seasons, and the results of the competition are second only to Fan Zhendong and Ma Long.
After 18 weeks of implementing the rules of the new world rankings, the two players need to achieve good results in high-level international competitions, at least not by foreign players, and the most hit male player is Xu Xin. The national table tennis men's singles veteran will mainly participate in mixed doubles and team competitions from the 2021 season to the 2022 season, and the results in singles are more average, and there are not many points that can be obtained. Entering the Paris Olympic cycle, due to his growing age, Xu Xin needs to face the impact of more national table tennis men's singles players, and whether he can get tickets is still unknown. Therefore, even if it is one of the 5 tigers of the national table tennis men's team, Xu Xin's world ranking is likely to suffer a cliff-like decline.
In terms of women's teams, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha have basically dominated the entire world women's table tennis scene in the past two seasons. After the ITTF achieved a new world ranking rule in the 18th week, these three main players still sit in the top three. Wang Yidi has played well at the World Championships and the Singapore Grand Slam, and the world rankings are expected to improve again. Liu Shiwen, the 2019 World Championships women's singles champion, has been hanging up the exemption card for the first half of the 2021 season, and the Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2021 World Championships have not achieved the desired results, and this rule change is extremely unfavorable to her future preparations!
(Luo Treasurer)