As we approach the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, everything related to the Olympics will heat up and become the focus of people's attention or heated discussions.
Since the beginning of this century, the Chinese table tennis team has established a dominant position of self-supremacy and domination of the world, so the Olympic memory of national table tennis is close to 100% beautiful.
But there is no such thing as perfection in the true sense of the word.
In the past 20 years, Chinese table tennis has also encountered two Olympic pain points, with a total of six people, working together to create the memory of those two cones.
First, in the 2004 Athens Olympics, Wang Hao lost the gold in men's singles
In the Athens Olympics, the main lineup of the national table tennis men's team is "two kings and one horse". Because the draw was not ideal, in the men's singles semifinals, the two national table tennis players Wang Liqin and Wang Hao met in advance.
It is said that according to what many people have been saying for a long time, the national table tennis coaching staff considered that the opponent in the final was Liu Chengmin of South Korea, and between the two kings, Wang Hao had a higher winning rate against Liu Chengmin, so they issued an order to let Wang Liqin give the ball to Wang Hao and send Wang Hao into the final to kill Liu Chengmin.
Unexpectedly, Wang Hao strangely lost to Liu Chengmin, who could handle it at will, and the national table tennis unexpectedly lost the most important men's singles gold medal.
This is a blow to the aircraft carrier, and it has also seriously hurt the emotions of countless people who love national table tennis. Wang Hao has never been able to break through since then, and he then won the men's singles silver medal twice at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, setting a shocking record of three consecutive Olympic runners-up.
Second, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen lost the mixed doubles championship
At the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the ITTF and the International Olympic Committee jointly launched a change to set up a mixed doubles event for the first time.
For the first gold medal in mixed doubles in history, the national table tennis attaches great importance to it, Liu Guoliang personally deployed and investigated, and finally determined Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen as the main player, and handed over the important task of entering the history books to this pair of "news network combinations".
However, in the final, facing the host pair of Mimato Ito/Hayabrine Mizutani, Python and Jujube capsized in a good situation with a 2:0 lead, and were shocked by the Japanese and lost this meaningful Olympic gold medal.
In this process, it is also the decision-making level that should bear the primary responsibility. Because before the Tokyo Olympics, Liu Shiwen had been killed by Ito Misei four times in various events, and she once suffered from deep Iranophobia, and even avoided three consecutive competitions in which Ito Misei participated.
Obviously, the coaching staff overestimated Liu Shiwen's ability to get rid of her demons, which seemed to give her the best chance to redeem herself, but in fact pushed her further into the abyss.