The National Table Tennis Championships, hailed by Chinese fans as "the strongest on the surface", are somewhat unworthy of their name this year. The 2024 Table Tennis National Championships ended on October 19, when the individual events (men's singles, women's singles, mixed doubles) were held, almost all the main national table tennis players who participated in the Asian Championships in Kazakhstan were absent, and after the Asian Championships ended, Wang Chuqin, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu and other national table tennis stars withdrew from the team competition of the National Championships that they originally planned to participate in.
Lin Gaoyuan is the only national table tennis main force to participate in the individual competition of the National Championships, he returned to China early from the Asian Championships to partner Liu Shiwen, and the "Poetry and Distance" combination after many years of absence from the field won the mixed doubles gold medal for the Guangdong team. The national team players who flew directly from Astana, Kazakhstan to Ordos to compete in the team competition include Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Shi Xunyao, Kuo Man, Xiang Peng and others. Fan Zhendong, who was in a state of adjustment, did not participate in the Asian Championships, and he and Xu Xin led the Shanghai men's team and achieved three consecutive championships in the men's team at the National Championships.
The National Table Tennis Championships, in which the main force of national table tennis was absent, gave the "budding new" a chance to emerge, and the youngsters competed for the "admission ticket" to the national first team. According to the competition regulations, the top eight registered athletes of the Chinese Table Tennis Association in men's and women's singles will be directly selected for the national first team.
In the men's singles field, although Yan An, Hou Yingchao, Yu Ziyang, Xue Fei and other veteran players all participated, they all went out early due to poor form. In the quarterfinals, the veteran Xu Xin retired due to a shoulder injury, and Sun Wen, a member of the national first team, and Matt and Li Yijie, who had withdrawn from the national table tennis, were all blocked from the semi-finals by the post-00s. The semi-finals also staged a "lower gram", and post-05 newcomers Huang Youzheng and Ao Hualei eliminated two members of the national table tennis team, Niu Guankai and Xu Haidong, respectively. In the end, 19-year-old Beijing player Huang Youzheng swept his opponent in the final and won the men's singles championship of the National Championships. And the 18-year-old Ao Hualei, who started from the qualifiers, also gained a lot, jumping from the national youth team to the national first team.
The list of men's singles champions of the National Championships includes famous names such as Wang Liqin, Wang Hao, Ma Lin, Zhang Jike, Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, etc., as well as short-lived meteors such as Hou Yingchao and Zhou Yu. It is too early to say that Huang Youzheng, a young player, "has already played", and former national player Yan An, as the senior brother of the Beijing team and the national table tennis team, made an objective comment on him: "To be honest, Huang Youzheng has not encountered the strongest lineup, nor has he encountered Xu Yingbin, Xiang Peng, Lin Shidong, athletes of the same age or a little older than him. In fact, he still has a long way to go, and he still has to go through many competitions to establish his position step by step. Compared with Lin Shidong, the men's singles champion of the last National Championships and now ranked No. 2 in the world, Huang Youzheng, who is the same age, still needs to further prove himself in the international arena. However, for the national table tennis men's team, it is undoubtedly a valuable harvest for the two young players to rise to the top in the National Championships, which is an important way for the national team to select and inspect young players.
Compared with the gains of the men's team, the national table tennis women's team has no fresh blood inflow. In the women's singles quarterfinals, Zhu Sibing, Yang Yiyun, Wang Xiaotong, He Zhuojia, Liu Weishan, Chen Yi, Liu Fei, and Fan Siqi are all members of the national first team, among which only Zhu Sibing, Chen Yi and Yang Yiyun are younger than Sun Yingsha, who has not yet reached the age of 24. Yang Yiyun, who lost to Liu Weishan in the women's singles final, and Zhu Sibing, who eliminated Qian Tianyi, the main force of national table tennis in the 1/16 finals, are both chippers with non-mainstream playing styles, and they are unlikely to become the main force of the women's team in the future. In the absence of Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Shi Xunyao, and Kuo Man, the women's singles field was full of accidents, the number one player Qian Tianyi missed the top 16, and the rookies Zong Geman and Qin Yuxuan, who had been trained in the international arena, were also out early, and the "dark horse" was not born in the end.
Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Shi Xunyao and other national table tennis women who returned in the team competition also played inconsistently - when playing against the Henan team, Wang Yidi of the Liaoning team partnered Chen Xingtong in the women's doubles, but unexpectedly lost to Yuan Xuejiao/Ma Yunhan; The 23-year-old Shi Xunyao was swept by Chen Yi, a junior sister of the national table tennis team and a player of the Shanghai team, in the women's team finals. Among the main players of the women's team, only Kuaiman maintained a complete victory, but the 20-year-old rising star was seriously "biased" in the international arena, although the mixed doubles performed well, but the women's singles and women's doubles results were not good enough.
Recently, the topic of the lack of reserve strength of the national table tennis women's team has been hotly discussed in the outside world, and it seems that it is not unfounded. In the recent international arena, the main performance of the national table tennis women's team has been unstable, and there are no newcomers. The National Championships further amplified this problem, and from the current situation of the national women's table tennis talent pool, the situation is also not optimistic.