Recently, the ITTF made a big move, adjusting the staff of the ITTF World Ranking Team, and China's Grand Slam player Li Xiaoxia entered it. First of all, the change in the organization personnel must be the normal old and new, and secondly, the algorithm of the world ranking has also changed, which is simply to cancel the "initial points" of 2020, completely relying on the sum of the highest points of the 8 races in the past year.
This "initial score" was actually set up to alleviate the impact of the epidemic on the world rankings, and it is reasonable to cancel it now. However, for some athletes, especially those who participate in the Open and WTT competitions with fewer singles, the impact is very large, and I am afraid that the world ranking will drop by dozens of places. Among them, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen are exactly like this.
As we all know, for the Tokyo Olympic Games, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen's main attack direction is still mixed doubles, and the singles results are not outstanding. Originally, relying on the achievements accumulated before, it was still possible to enter the top ten of the world rankings, but this change, let alone the top ten, is probably the top fifty, it is difficult to enter.
The problem is that after Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen's Tokyo Olympics, they did not participate much in singles, and their results in the limited competitions were not very good. So the question is, why does the ITTF set the world ranking? How useful is this world ranking?
In fact, the use of the world ranking is two, one is to reflect the true level of athletes, try to achieve ranking = strength; the other is that ranking is used to set the basis for seeded players in various large competitions. Originally, there was nothing wrong with this idea, just like the kick-off net points ranking, which was to reflect the level and ranking of athletes. But the ITTF has been executing for a while and has discovered a serious problem.
The serious problem is that many table tennis powers (well, we are Talking about China) do not participate in the ITTF competition very actively, but purely for the sake of the list. Once you get enough points to keep the seed seats of the Olympic Games and the World Table Tennis Championships, the follow-up competitions are not very important, and the main force often does not participate, sending some second teams and young players to fight monsters and upgrades.
To be honest, this does not affect the gold content and reliability of the world ranking. Because even if Ma Long and Fan Zhendong do not play a game, their strength is still in the top two. The ITTF would not object to this either. But the key point is that a large number of top players do not participate in the competition, but instead go to participate in the leagues and grand prix held by the countries themselves, diluting the international table tennis federation events, which is fatal. So the International Table Tennis Federation quickly adjusted the algorithm, requiring points to be calculated according to the highest score of 8 times in the last year, so that everyone had to participate in the competition frequently, so that the International Table Tennis Federation also "controlled" the world's top table tennis masters.
As a result, advertising and commercial operations came, and the International Table Tennis Federation also made a lot of money.
Therefore, we must not underestimate this "world ranking algorithm", behind this reflects the core values of "ITTF control", "ITTF commercial revenue" and so on. However, the International Table Tennis Federation is also very clear that the rights and interests of athletes should also be reflected in the algorithm, and athletes should not be blindly allowed to participate in too many competitions, thus bringing injuries. This trade-off requires athletes - ITTF to jointly negotiate, which is why Chairman Liu Guoliang arranged for Li Xiaoxia to join the ITTF World Ranking Working Group.
Well, about the world ranking today to talk about this, recently there are very few matches, for table tennis everyone has anything to know, you can leave a message below, we will arrange one after another.