On April 19, Beijing time, in the 1/4 finals of the Macau Table Tennis Singles World Cup, Chinese player Fan Zhendong lost to teammate Lin Gaoyuan 2-4 and missed the semifinals. The defeat in this match cast a deep shadow on Fan Zhendong's prospects for the Paris Olympics and even his future career.
In fact, Fan Zhendong's state has been in the doldrums for a long time! Fan Zhendong's most recent singles championship dates back to the men's singles championship in Ljubljana in July last year, and since then, Fan Zhendong has fallen into a "championship drought" for nearly nine months!
At the Pyeongchang Asian Championships in September last year, although Fan Zhendong partnered with Lin Gaoyuan to win the doubles championship, he lost 2-3 to the veteran Ma Long in the singles final and won the runner-up!
At the Hangzhou Asian Games in October last year, Fan Zhendong faced Wang Chuqin in the final, and after a hard battle, he finally lost to Wang Chuqin with a score of 3-4, and once again missed the championship! Then, before the start of the Lanzhou Star Challenge held in October last year, Fan Zhendong announced that he would retire due to injury!
In the Frankfurt Championship last November, Fan Zhendong lost 1-3 to South Korea's Lee Sang-so in the second round of the men's singles!
Entering 2024, Fan Zhendong's state is even more unpredictable.
In the WTT Doha finals in January, Fan Zhendong was swept 0-4 by Wang Chuqin in the men's singles final and missed the championship again. In the WTT Doha Star Challenge, Fan Zhendong announced his retirement due to injury in the tiebreaker against the teenager Lin Shidong, and was sentenced to lose 2-3 and missed the semifinals.
In the Singapore Grand Slam in March, Fan Zhendong lost 1-3 again in the second round of the game to the teenager Lin Shidong and was eliminated early. In the subsequent Incheon Championships, Fan Zhendong lost to Brazilian player Hugo 2-4 in the semifinals, becoming the first men's singles national player to lose a foreign battle and be deducted points after the introduction of the new rules for the Paris Olympic selection.
Until the Macau World Cup lost to Lin Gaoyuan, Fan Zhendong has lost as many as 7 singles matches, a championship is hard to find, and only three runners-up, and during this period, Fan Zhendong also experienced the "unfair treatment turmoil" in the South Korean game, the "watch the mold concert turmoil" during the Singapore game, Lanzhou and Taiyuan retired due to injury, and the Macau game applied for a medical suspension, and it is suspected that his wrist injury has affected his level of performance. In a short period of time, it is indeed a headache to encounter so many troubles.
The Paris Olympics are imminent, and the occurrence of honor and so on suddenly encounters a double crisis on and off the field. Where do we go from here?