On February 5, Beijing time, the Japan Table Tennis Association and the table tennis team officially announced the list of participants for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
It's really embarrassing to think that Ito almost single-handedly changed the pattern of the national table tennis women's team, let Ding Ning, Liu Shiwen, Zhu Yuling and others step down from the altar, and at the same time created a new history in the Japanese table tennis world, but only three years after winning the last championship, it was really embarrassing!
Misei Ito, who was born in 2000, was once the strongest opponent in national table tennis, and she was selected for the women's team list of the Rio Olympics as early as 2016, when she was only 15 years old, which is the same age as the current Zhang Benmeihe.
However, Ito's real rise was in the Tokyo Olympic cycle, when she defeated almost all the main national table tennis players, including Ding Ning, Liu Shiwen, Zhu Yuling, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, only Chen Meng was "spared", and also blasted an exaggerated score of 11-0 against the Grand Slam Ding Ning, shaking the table tennis world.
It is no exaggeration to say that if there is no Ito Micheng, then Ding Ning and Zhu Yuling may be selected for the Tokyo Olympics, and Liu Shiwen also has a high probability of participating in singles, but the three of them have been gradually marginalized because of several defeats to Ito Micheng, and finally made room for Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu and other teammates with better records against Ito.
In 2021, Misei Ito ushered in the highlight moment of her career, reversing Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen with Mizutani Hayabusa to win the first mixed doubles Olympic gold medal in history, and the two became the first pair of Olympic champions in Japanese table tennis.
However, after the end of the Tokyo Olympics, Ito's state plummeted, not only did he have no victory against the main force of national table tennis, but also repeatedly lost in Japan, losing to the main force, non-main force, adult players, and underage high school students, and finally fell out of the top two in the team selection standings, and lost the Olympic singles event in advance at the end of January this year.
In the case of no longer participating in the mixed doubles event, Misei Ito only has the women's team qualification left to fight, but she also lost to Miwa Zhangmoto, and thus completely missed the 2024 Paris Olympics.
I have to say that the Japanese table tennis world is indeed fiercely competitive, and Ito Misei is the Olympic champion, but she still can't gain a foothold in the team, and she loses the qualification to participate if she doesn't pay attention to it.
Looking ahead, Ito's chances of competing at the 2028 Olympics are even slimmer, so will she have a chance to return to the Olympics and compete with China?