If you ask who is the first person in the world table tennis? I believe that many people will first think of Sweden's Waldner. Waldner is a veritable table tennis evergreen, competing in world table tennis from the age of 17, and in 21 years, he has played against 6 generations of Chinese players. In his career, he won the World Cup, Olympic Games, and World Table Tennis Championships singles championships, and was the first Grand Slam player in the world table tennis world, ranking first in the world for a total of 823 days and ranking first in the world for 534 consecutive days.
But if Waldner hadn't won the 1992 Olympic table tennis singles competition, would he still be considered the first person in world table tennis at the time? If China's Ma Wenge won the men's table tennis singles championship at the 1992 Olympic Games, do you think Ma Wenge was the first in the world? Or is Waldner number one in the world? In fact, the level of Ma Wenge and Waldner is comparable. Ma Wenge defeated Waldner many times, and the two of them collided together, and it was normal for who won and who lost. But many people may have forgotten about the Ma Cultural Revolution now.
Because the weight of the Olympic singles gold medal is too heavy, other players who have won the World Cup and the World Table Tennis Championships singles championship, although they are not much worse than Waldner in terms of strength, but in the eyes of the audience, they and Waldner have a significant gap. In other words, athletes who have won the Olympic championship will naturally bless them. Therefore, when later generations evaluate who is the first person in the world, whether they have won the Olympic singles championship is the biggest consideration. Later, the world's first people Liu Guoliang, Kong Linghui, Ma Long, Zhang Jike, all of them have won the Olympic singles championship without exception. Although Wang Hao is strong and has won three consecutive Olympic singles silver medals, he is not regarded as the first person in the world table tennis world because he has not won a gold medal.
That's the cruelty of competitive sports, just look at the results. The result affects and even determines people's judgment, but the result is also the most just. Because the results calmed down the selective bias caused by different groups of people due to different personal preferences.
In the process of Go entering the World Series, the most important competition or the most representative competition is undoubtedly the first Ying Cup final in 1989. In that match, South Korea's Cho Hwan Hyun Kyu Dan defeated China's Nie Weiping Kudan 3:2 to win the first Ying's Cup. Before the Ying Cup final, Nie Weiping was already a national hero in China. After the final of the Ying Cup, Cho became a national hero of South Korea, and led to the rapid rise of Korean Go, and eventually became the hegemon of the world chess world. It was also after winning the Ying Cup that Cao Xuanxuan was considered to be the first person in the world chess world at that time. In 1990, two-time Fujitsu Cup world champion Masaki Takemiya defeated Cho Kaoru-hyun 2–0 in the strongest peak battle. But this also does not change people's judgment and perception of Cho Hwang-hyun's world's first person. Why? It is because the weight of the Ying Cup champion is too heavy. The Ying Cup is held every four years and is regarded as the Go Olympic Games. The prize money winner reached $400,000, which was an astronomical amount at the time.
An interesting question arises, if in the 1989 Ying Cup final, Nie Weiping defeated Cho Hwan-hyun to win the championship. So will Nie Weiping be regarded as the world's first person? The answer is beyond doubt. If Nie Weiping wins the Ying Cup, no one doubts Nie Weiping's strength and status as the world's first person. Before the Ying Cup competition, Nie Weiping had already defeated many of Japan's super-first-class chess players in the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament consecutively, and won the praise and affirmation of a generation of grandmaster Wu Qingyuan that "Nie Weiping is in fact the world's first person".
The reason why the Ying Cup was created is precisely because of Nie Weiping's miraculous performance in the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament. The reason why Mr. Ying Changqi invested heavily in holding the Ying Cup was first, out of a sense of responsibility for the great mission of promoting Go to the world, and the second was Nie Weiping's personal factors. Before the final of the Ying's Cup, Nie Weiping had already been officially canonized as a god, and public opinion was also overwhelmingly optimistic about Nie Weiping winning the championship. Imagine if Nie Weiping won the most important world championship, coupled with the consecutive victories against Japan's top players in the Sino-Japanese Go Ring, I am afraid that no discerning person can deny Nie Weiping's status as the world's first person.
But unfortunately, Nie Weiping eventually lost. Although in hindsight, Nie Weiping Qisheng lost outside the chessboard, and indeed lost a bit unjustly, in fact, there was a great chance of winning. Cho Hyun Hyun Kudan was victorious within the rules and is beyond reproach.
Cao Xuanxuan, who won the Ying Cup, did not stop there, but won 8 consecutive world championships, a total of 9 world championships in his career, and the ninth world championship was won by defeating China's Chang Hao at the age of 49.
Therefore, Nie Weiping's nine-dan and the world's first person's status regrettably passed by, while Cao Xuanxuan's nine-dan status as the world's first person was full of gold, which was platinum-level.