On April 25, Beijing time, the WTT Saudi Arabia Grand Slam Organizing Committee announced the ownership of the last three wild cards, and the national table tennis received two of them, namely women's doubles and men's doubles. The national table tennis Xiaohua Kuaiman, who originally expected to get a women's singles wild card through the Macau Singles World Cup, failed to play in Macau, she lost to Tian Zhixi in the group stage and failed to qualify, so she failed to get the favor of the Saudi Grand Slam host, and the women's singles wild card was not issued to her.
The two wild cards received by the national table tennis team, the women's doubles were arranged to Chen Xingtong/Wang Yidi, and the men's doubles was arranged to Lin Gaoyuan/Liang Jingkun.
Chen Xingtong and Wang Yidi are both from the Liaoning team, and when they represent the Liaoning team in domestic competitions, the two are natural women's doubles partners. Under the leadership of the Tongdi combination, the Liaoning women's team has won the team gold medal in the National Games and the National Championships consecutively.
At the national team level, Chen Xingtong and Wang Yidi have not had much experience in doubles, but the tacit understanding established in the Liaoning team is enough to support their good performance.
Lin Gaoyuan and Liang Jingkun have not been paired in doubles in the national team, and the Gao Liang combination was even the No. 1 men's doubles carefully cultivated by the coaching staff for a time. Lin Gaoyuan and Liang Jingkun have been teaming up since 2019, and they both performed their best in 2019. At the Austrian Open and the Asian Championships in Jakarta that year, Lin Gaoyuan and Liang Jingkun both won the men's doubles championship.
Then the sorghum group was entrusted with the important task, but they never won the championship again. At the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships in Houston, the Gao Liang combination stopped in the semi-finals, in the 2022 WTT Budapest Star Challenge, they won the runner-up, and in the WTT Zagreb Regular Challenge in June 2023 and the 23 Hangzhou Asian Games, the Gao Liang combination fell in the quarterfinals. After the Hangzhou Asian Games, the sorghum combination has never been paired again.
Lin Gaoyuan and Liang Jingkun are a left and right match, and the natural cooperation attribute is very good. Both of them are in the top five in the world in singles, and they have a relatively solid doubles pairing base, so it should not be difficult to regain the familiar feeling.
The Saudi Grand Slam, where the Olympic doubles pairs of the associations are in full swing, is the last chance to simulate a full latitude before the Olympics. The two pairs of doubles wild cards of national table tennis are temporary teams and will not have any performance requirements. The main mission of Tongdi and Sorghum is threefold:
First, to experience the strength and characteristics of the doubles players of various associations, and fully collect information for national table tennis;
Second, as many minesweepers as possible for the main leading combination of men's doubles and the main dream fish combination of women's doubles, after all, they have reached the third mode, and frustration education is no longer applicable to the players in the Olympic squad, and they need to use good results to boost and consolidate their confidence. For example, Japan and South Korea have created two pairs of women's doubles cross-border pairs, which came to muddy the pond and clear the periphery of Tian Zhixi/Shin Yubin and Miu Hirano/Zhang Benmei and the two Olympic pairs. Now we have our own minesweeper protector, which will definitely be more conducive to the overall Olympic preparation of national table tennis.
Third, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Lin Gaoyuan, and Liang Jingkun should fully demonstrate their immediate combat ability and adaptability in doubles, and the coaching staff must take into account their doubles ability when selecting the P card. Four of them, at least three of them are considered for the P card.
In the end, Kuo Man did not receive a wild card in the women's singles, and she was already doomed the moment she was eliminated from the group stage of the Macau Singles World Cup. Originally, the national table tennis coaching staff did expect Kuo Man to perform better in the Macau Singles World Cup, at least to qualify from the group, so that it was possible to "ask" the Saudi Arabian Grand Slam host for a women's singles wild card for her, after all, there are basically no table tennis players in Saudi Arabia, and the huge human resources of the Chinese team still have great charisma.
However, Kuaman himself is not angry...