Today is the 100-day countdown to the Paris Olympics, and for badminton, there is another major event before the Olympics, which is the 2024 Thomas Cup and Uber Cup in Chengdu, which will be held in Chengdu in 10 days. The registration deadline for each team is 0:00 on April 14, and the list of participants was announced yesterday. The Chinese team playing at home sent the highest-ranked and strongest players in each individual event, with Shi Yuqi, Chen Yufei, "Liang Wang" and "Fan Chen" leading the squad.
In the just-concluded Asian Championships, the national feather won 3 golds, 3 silvers and 7 bronzes, and the team set off for Chengdu this Monday to prepare for the Tang You Cup at the Shuangliu base. This year's Tang You Cup was held at home, and the national feather shouldered the expectation of re-impacting the double cup, so he did his best to show the strongest hole card.
The national feather men's team is led by Shi Yuqi, who has returned to second in the world rankings, and will once again shoulder the heavy responsibility of the first singles of the Tang Cup after two and a half years; Li Shifeng, who reached the final of the Asian Championships and is in good form, will once again serve as the second singles; and the selected men's singles are Lu Guangzu and Weng Hongyang. The Men's Doubles line-up is clearer, with new Asian Championships champions Leung Wai Hang/Wang Chang making their Tang Cup debut, while Olympic qualifiers Liu Yuchen/Ou Xuanyi and Ho Jiting/Ren Xiangyu will be lined up around the second doubles.
In terms of the You Cup, the national feather women's singles won the semi-finals again in the Ningbo Asian Championships after 12 years, Chen Yufei, He Bingjiao, Han Yue, and Wang Zhiyi joined hands on the podium, and the four of them were selected for the You Cup lineup. The Women's Doubles line-up is also uncontroversial, with Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan, Tan Ning/Liu Shengshu and Zheng Yu/Zhang Shuxian, who have joined hands on the podium at the Asian Championships, against major opponents such as Japan, South Korea and Thailand.
Many of the main opponents are also aiming to win the championship, such as Indonesia, Denmark, Chinese Taipei, and India in the Tang Cup. The Chinese Taipei men's team also sent a lineup of four men's singles and six doubles players, and their men's doubles combination has performed eye-catching recently and has a good chance of scoring; the Danish men's team and the Indian men's team have a similar structure, both of which are strong in the top three, and the Indian men's team even has five men's singles players; Indonesia's men's singles Jonatan won the All England and Asian Championships gold medals in a row, and the men's doubles recovery has greatly restored competitiveness.
In addition, some team changes are also worth noting, such as the Japanese men's team that includes the long-lost Kento Momota, who will be a potential "threat" to every opponent if he plays the third singles, the South Korean men's team once again sent a lesser-known men's singles player, and the doubles did not send Luo Xingsheng, who has made many contributions in the team competition, and the Malaysian men's team has five singles and five doubles, which means that their men's doubles has very little room for change. At the same time, some Malaysian media have recently reported that singles player Huang Zhiyong, who was selected for the soup cup lineup, may not be able to play due to injury.
The competition between China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand has long existed in recent years: the lineup of the Japanese women's team is similar to the prediction, including the women's singles Akane Yamaguchi, Aya Ohori, Nozomi Okuhara, and Yuka Miyazaki, and the doubles does not have a "rape flower" combination, led by "Goat" and "Double High"; the South Korean women's team canceled the registration of the second singles Kim Ga-eun at the last moment and sent Kim Min-sun instead, which also means that the original three-singles Shen Youzhen is likely to be promoted to the second singles; and Ben Yapa, one of the sisters of the Thai women's team, is absent due to injury, so their lineup is only 9 people. In addition, the Indian women's team, which won the championship as a dark horse in the Asian team competition this year, chose to practice, and the first singles Sindhu and the first and second doubles in the ranking were all suspended.