Beijing time on May 5, the current time has come to the beginning of May. At present, a major heavyweight event in the world table tennis world, the Saudi Arabian Grand Slam of table tennis, is in full swing. Since this is an important event before the Paris Olympics, the associations attach great importance to it. The national table tennis side also tried its best to participate in it, and on the first day of the competition that just ended, many national table tennis players played strongly. Among them, the 30-year-old national table tennis Olympic champion won the first game and successfully advanced to the top 32 of singles, but the challenge has just begun for her!
In the first round of women's singles, national table tennis player Chen Meng and Romanian player Diaconu faced off. Let's talk about Chen Meng's side first, as the main force of the women's team that has shown its edge since the Tokyo cycle, it is currently ranked 4th in the world. Coming to the Paris Olympics, Chen Meng still has the dream of continuing to impact the Olympic singles. According to the current competitive situation and points of the national table tennis women's team, there is no suspense for Chen Meng to participate in the Olympic team competition, and now it is short of singles qualification. Holding the Olympic Games, the World Cup singles championship, her main competitor in the team at this stage is Wang Manyu, this Saudi Arabia Grand Slam, the results of the two will most likely directly determine their singles quota, Chen Meng is currently behind Wang Manyu (points difference of 1555 points), she needs to make a difference in the Saudi Grand Slam.
On the opponent's side, Romanian players Diaconu and Chen Meng are not of the same grade, and the competitive level is average, so Chen Meng has an absolute advantage in terms of strength on paper, and she must strive to end the battle as soon as possible and maintain good physical strength and energy to meet the follow-up challenges. In the first set of this round, Chen Meng quickly entered the state, the first three boards were solid, the quality of the shot was very high, Diaconu did not find a good way to deal with it, and Chen Meng immediately took the lead 11-5. In the second set, Diaconu tried to make a fuss about the stalemate, and did not fall behind in the hard-to-go confrontation with Chen Meng. However, Chen Meng had an experience advantage in key points, and won 12-10 again after a struggle. In the third set, Chen Meng was full of momentum, Diaconu lost the courage to fight back, and Chen Meng ended the game 11-3. In this regard, Chen Meng got off to a good start 3-0 and successfully advanced to the top 32 of women's singles.
Throughout the game, although Chen Meng's state was a little up and down, and there were a certain number of unnecessary mistakes, Chen Meng could be regarded as a normal performance, as long as he could advance. For Chen Meng, there will be 4 potential opponents in the follow-up that she needs to take seriously: the first is Japanese table tennis player Miyu Hirano, the second is Japanese table tennis player Miwa Zhangmoto, the third is Wang Manyu, and the fourth is Sun Yingsha. Needless to say, the first two are based on the new rules of the national table tennis coaching staff's "don't lose in foreign wars", Chen Meng needs to defeat these two strong Japanese table tennis players, after all, losing any game means directly losing the women's singles qualification, and you can't be sloppy. The latter two are Chen Meng's teammates who are difficult to say that they are sure to win in the current women's team. Between the strength of the two sides, it all depends on the on-the-spot performance. The pressure on Chen Meng at this stop is very great.
Chen Meng, who is in adversity, is in desperate need of a victory to boost himself. After all, she is no longer the peak dream of the Tokyo Olympics, and she needs to be patient to polish her form to realize the seemingly impossible counterattack dream. If she can show the form she was in when she played against Sun Yingsha in the previous World Cup, then Chen Meng's threat in this station is very strong, and everything is possible if the ball does not land. I hope she can take care of her health and play her best as she can!