The first quarterfinals of the table tennis women's singles at the Paris Olympics have ended, and Chen Meng of the Chinese team, who is also the defending champion of this Olympic Games, finally swept Polkanova 4:0 [11-5, 11-3, 11-0, 11-8] and took the lead in advancing to the semifinals. The first and fourth games encountered some difficulties, the second game and the third game were played relatively quickly, especially in the third game, which was the first 11:0 in the national table tennis Olympic competition. There is really nothing to say about the process of this game, and the focus of this article is that it is Ma Lin, who served as the off-court coach for this game, and his off-court command has made a big improvement compared to the last Tokyo Olympics.
In the last Tokyo Olympics, Ma Lin served as the off-court coach of the mixed doubles competition, and there was only one pause in the whole game of table tennis, so the timing of this pause was a test for the coaches, because Ma Lin's timeout was called too early at that time, and it was called a timeout when she was ahead, which led to Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen not being able to use the timeout to adjust their rhythm when most of the last game was behind, and lost the gold medal in mixed doubles. Now we see Marlene, his pause is still relatively tight.
This will be of great help to Chen Meng in the next games, because now Chen Meng is actually down compared with the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, at least compared with Sun Yingsha, he is at a disadvantage, so off-court guidance is more important, and a good pause can indeed make up for the gap in strength.
The first and fourth games of this strong game are still a little difficult, especially when the fourth game is about to be won, and there are some more difficult situations, and this timeout held by the coach is very important. Therefore, Ma Lin's progress in off-court guidance and command will play a great role in making up for Chen Meng's disadvantage in strength at this stage of the Olympic cycle, and will become an important support for Chen Meng to defend the Olympic women's singles gold medal.
At this time, I have to mention yesterday's game, which was Wang Chuqin's loss to Moregard. There are many reasons for the loss in this game, such as the racket problem that everyone often mentions, and Wang Chuqin's own mentality adjustment problem, which are all reasons for losing. But there is another reason and detail that cannot be ignored, that is, in the third game, when Wang Chuqin was leading 5:3, he was chased by Moregard for a point, and when he chased it to 5:4, he suddenly called a timeout inexplicably. Of course, we don't know whether this suspension was applied by Wang Chuqin himself or called by Xiao Zhan, but it is undeniable that this suspension is a little inexplicable.
The opponent chased only one point. Even if you may feel that this ball really has a certain impact on yourself, you are a little uncertain about the opponent's rhythm, you can play two more to see. Don't be in such a hurry to call a timeout. Most of the time, the Chinese table tennis team is playing downwind, once encountering a headwind, our coaches and players are always a little nervous, always want to call this timeout first, and eat the opponent to death in one go. But in this case, this precious time-out is often wasted, because the game goes to the third game, a best-of-seven game, and there may be more difficult and urgent situations later, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with holding the timeout tightly in your hand.