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On January 11, Beijing time, the WTT Doha Star Challenge entered the fierce fourth day, and the 1/16 finals of the singles main draw were launched. This event is particularly interesting because it is the first all-round event of table tennis in 2024 and it is an Olympic year. In order to allow more players to have the opportunity to participate in the Olympic Games, the ITTF has specially revised the rules and canceled the previous system of limiting the top 20 players to 6, making the participating lineup unprecedentedly strong, similar to the level of the World Table Tennis Championships.
The Chinese table tennis team sent 16 players to participate in this event, including 8 men and 8 women's singles. In the men's singles, the main players include Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and Wang Chuqin, while the main women's singles players include Chen Meng, Wang Manyu and so on. The top ten main players of national table tennis all appeared on the stage, and several non-main players also participated in the competition. It is worth mentioning that the 23-year-old Yuan Licen performed well in the qualifying round, but ultimately failed to enter the men's singles main draw.
In the first round of the singles main draw on January 10, Zhou Qihao of national table tennis defeated Denmark's Grote 3-0 and successfully advanced to the top 32 of men's singles. On January 11, 7 men's singles and 8 women's singles players will all appear, including Liang Jingkun, Zhou Qihao, Lin Shidong, Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, Lin Gaoyuan and Wang Chuqin in the men's singles competition, as well as Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi, Chen Meng, Chen Xingtong, Zhang Rui and other women's singles competitions.
These matches are undoubtedly well worth looking forward to for fans, especially considering that Liang Jingkun will face Japan's rising star Daito Shinozuka and Zhou Qihao will face the German-Chinese star Qiu Dang. At the same time, the South Korean team also has a number of players in the competition, but as many as 8 players have lost and gone out, showing the intensity of the game. In South Korea's men's singles, Zhao Dacheng and others performed well.
Overall, this WTT Doha Star Challenge is not only a platform for the national table tennis team to show their strength, but also an important opportunity to prepare for the upcoming Paris Olympics. The strong lineup sent by the Chinese team and the wonderful performance of the players in the game indicate that Chinese table tennis still maintains a high competitiveness in the international arena.