The former national table tennis world champion and now Luxembourg's main player Ni Xialian lost to the 19-year-old host player Arapovich, and the big score was 0-2 behind to 2-2, and the two games won only let the opponent take 1 point and 2 points respectively, but the tiebreaker led 10-6 but did not win, which is regrettable.
Recently, Ni Xialian's state has also been up and down, although she won the women's singles championship in a feeder tournament, but then lost quickly in the next two games, this time the women's singles round, the mixed doubles led 2-0 and lost 3 games in a row, and also stopped in the first round.
Ni Xialian, born in 1963, is currently the current world champion with the highest "seniority" in the table tennis world, and in 1983, she represented the Chinese team to win the women's team and mixed doubles championship of the World Table Tennis Championships.
After the arrival of 2024, Ni Xialian defeated the national table tennis hope star Kuo Man, and later won the women's singles championship in the first WTT Lebanon feeder tournament, but then stopped in the quarterfinals in the second stop, and now the WTT Croatia feeder has collapsed just after the game.
In the first round of the women's singles, Ni Xialian met Croatian athlete Alapovich, a 19-year-old athlete ranked 120th in the world, who did not have much outstanding performance in the table tennis world, but quickly adapted to the opponent's style of play after meeting Ni Xialian, and then won two games in a row 11-6, 11-3, forcing the 41-year-old seniors into a desperate situation.
In the third game, Ni Xialian's state broke out, and she won 11-1 in the fourth game, and then won 11-2 in the fourth game, but she was unable to turn the tide in the decisive game, losing 4 match points in a row after leading 10-6, and finally lost the whole game 11-13, which was indeed a big ups and downs.
As mentioned earlier, in addition to the Women's Singles, Ni Xialian also made a round trip in the Mixed Doubles event, losing 2-3 to Singapore's Wang Xinru/Peng Wangwei (11-9, 11-7, 10-12, 7-11, 8-11) with her partner Luca leading 2-0 to reach the round of 16.
In recent years, Ni Xialian's performance is similar, the main reason why she can stand on the front line of table tennis is that her playing style is extremely scarce, so she can often win by surprise when she encounters opponents who are not familiar with her, and even if she is adapted after a period of time, she can make the newly grown young players feel unfamiliar again, so as to "survive" generation after generation.
However, no matter what the results are, 60-year-old Ni Xialian is already an immortal legend in the table tennis world, and I look forward to her performance in the next competition!