On January 19, 2023, Beijing time, the World Table Tennis Federation Regular Challenge Doha ended the first day of the main competition, National Table Tennis performed well in the singles field, 12 people participated in the main event, 10 people successfully advanced, only Liang Yancang of the men's singles and He Zhuojia of the women's singles encountered a round of travel. Compared with Durban, the competitive state of the men's team has greatly improved, and the 26-year-old Zhou Qihao has returned strongly, sweeping Germany's Duda, as well as Lin Shidong, Xiang Peng and other young players are becoming more and more stable, which is good news for the new coach of the men's team, Wang Hao.
In the new season, the national table tennis soldiers were divided into two ways, and the main players first participated in the Asian qualifiers of the Durban World Table Tennis Championships, and then returned to China for training. The young players have competed in consecutive Durban and Doha races, which is a good opportunity to gain experience. In the Durban competition, the women's team played well, the young players had obvious advantages, while the men's team performed poorly, and many people were out in the qualifying round, compared to the women's team, the national table tennis men's team encountered greater challenges.
However, coming to Doha, the men's team quickly improved their performance, and on the first day of the main competition, Xiang Peng, Lin Shidong, Yuan Licen and Zhou Qihao joined hands to advance to the round of 16. Xiang Peng and Lin Shidong were very consistent, both winning 3-0. The 26-year-old Zhou Qihao was in a slump before and slowly moved away from the main team, but he did not give up, trained hard during this time, returned strongly in Doha, and swept Germany's Duda 3-0, who is a key player trained by German men's table tennis, and performed extremely well in the Chengdu Team World Table Tennis Championships last season, but in front of Zhou Qihao, he did not have much to do.
For Wang Hao, the new coach of the men's team, he is under great pressure, on the one hand, he must continue to build the main team, and on the other hand, he must cultivate young players to make the men's team successfully complete the replacement of new and old. At present, it seems that Lin Shidong, Xiang Peng and other young players are worthy of Wang Hao's reuse, because they are becoming more and more stable, and if Zhou Qihao can continue his good form, it will also make the competition in the first team more intense. All in all, the outstanding performance of the young players in Doha has given Wang Hao good news and confidence, and the men's team will definitely become stronger and stronger.
After the first round of singles, the four members of National Table Tennis reached the round of 16 of men's singles, Xiang Peng next faced Achanta, Lin Shidong faced Zhao Shengmin, Zhou Qihao faced Portugal's Freitas, and Yuan Licen played Croatia's Pukar, Liang Yancang lost 0-3 to Zhang Yuzhen, stopping the first round. In the women's singles competition, 7 people from National Table Tennis played in the main event, and 6 people advanced to the round of 16, only He Zhuojia lost 2-3 to No. 2 seed Yuan Jianan. In the second round, Qian Tianyi faced Germany's Kaufmann, Liu Weishan against Samara, Qu Man and Fan Siqi played a derby, Chen Yi faced Hungary's Madaras, and Zhang Rui faced South Korea's Tian Zhixi.
In the doubles arena, the two pairs of national table tennis reached the quarterfinals of men's doubles, namely Yu Ziyang/Zhou Kai and Xiang Peng/Yuan Licen, all of whom are in the second half of the region and strive to meet in the semifinals. In the women's doubles arena, only Quang Man/Zhang Rui reached the quarterfinals, and then against Du Kaixuan/Zhu Chengzhu, only Quang Man/Lin Shidong reached the quarterfinals in the mixed doubles arena, it should be said that the pressure to compete for the championship in the three doubles events is relatively great, I wish the national table tennis all the best!