The 2024 Saudi Arabia Grand Slam has come to a successful conclusion, with the national table tennis winning 5 gold medals, Chen Meng defeating Sun Yingsha to be crowned the women's singles champion, and Wang Chuqin becoming the biggest winner, he won three gold medals in men's singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles. This is also the last event with a relatively high gold content in the Paris Olympic selection cycle, and the national table tennis has been born in both men's singles and women's singles for the Olympic Games. The Chinese Table Tennis Association has announced that Wang Chuqin and Fan Zhendong won the men's singles quota for the Paris Olympics and were automatically selected for the men's team competition.
And after the Saudi Grand Slam, there is no suspense about the Olympic women's singles quota. Sun Yingsha scored 30,050 points in the Olympic singles trials, ranking first among all players, while Chen Meng surpassed Wang Manyu to rank second with 17,960 points. Sun Yingsha and Chen Meng will qualify for the women's singles quota at the Paris Olympics and will automatically be selected for the women's team competition. In other words, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha will both compete in singles, team and mixed doubles.
In the entire Paris Olympics selection cycle, the 24-year-old Wang Chuqin has made the greatest progress, in just 3 years (2021 Tokyo Olympics - 2024 Paris Olympics), he has become the world's No. 1, surpassing Fan Zhendong, Ma Long and other teammates, is already the undoubted national table tennis brother, replacing Fan Zhendong's position, originally everyone thought that after Ma Long retired, Fan Zhendong was the successor, but now Wang Chuqin overtook in the corner, and he is already the best candidate for the successor of the Dragon team. According to statistics, in the past three years, Wang Chuqin has participated in a total of 28 competitions and won a total of 36 titles, including 11 men's singles championships, both of which ranked first in national table tennis, far ahead.
In terms of the number of championships, Wang Chuqin ranked first with 36 championships, more than twice as many as Fan Zhendong, and Xiaopang won the championship 17 times in 23 competitions, which is already very good, but his performance in various competitions in 2024 is a little disappointing. Lin Gaoyuan ranked 3rd with 15 championships, which is quite surprising, and it can be seen that Lin Gaoyuan has also worked hard in recent years, participated in 26 competitions, and did his best in every game, but Lin Gaoyuan's state is unstable, and his psychological quality also needs to be improved. Liang Jingkun won the championship 11 times, Ma Long won the championship 9 times, the overall performance of several men's singles cores of national table tennis is good, and the 36-year-old veteran Ma Long has been persistent, he is the men's singles champion of the Macau World Cup, and has been creating miracles.
The singles championship is the most golden, Wang Chuqin is still ranked 1st with 11 championships, Fan Zhendong is still ranked 2nd, he has reached the top 7 times, and the third is Liang Jingkun who has 6 times, Ma Long, Lin Gaoyuan, and Lin Shidong are all 2 times. Therefore, no matter from the total number of champions in the Paris Olympic cycle or the total number of singles champions, Fan Zhendong deserves to win the men's singles quota for the Paris Olympics, because the points are accumulated based on the performance of the past 3 years, rather than just looking at a few matches in 2024, and Fan Zhendong is only 27 years old this year, he is still very young, and physical fitness is definitely not a problem.
The quota places for the Olympic men's singles, women's singles and mixed doubles have been determined, and the next step is to see who the players in the men's and women's teams are. Judging from personal performance, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun, and Lin Shidong all have opportunities, while Wang Manyu has no problem participating in the women's team, and Wang Yidi and Chen Xingtong are also not out.