The 1993 World Table Tennis Championships in Gothenburg, a sad place for Chinese fans.
At that time, the national table tennis men's team has experienced a trough of up to 5 years, the Olympic Games, the World Table Tennis Championships, the World Cup have been defeated one after another, and the head coach has also changed twice. After Cai Zhenhua came to power, the team's combat effectiveness began to improve, so everyone riveted enough to play a turnaround battle at the Swedish's home field, but they were slapped on the ground by the opponent's backhand.
In the team final, Cai Zhenhua carefully laid out and boldly predicted the opponent's unconventional deployment, and then made an arrangement that caught the opponent off guard, but the two main players Wang Hao and Wang Tao collapsed, and finally everyone lost 1-3 in total, and the Chinese team missed the championship trophy for the third consecutive World Table Tennis Championships.
And all this is just the beginning of the nightmare.
After the team defeat, the morale of the whole team took a sharp turn, and in the next men's singles match, the national table tennis will suffer a rare rout, so how bad is the loss?
None of them reached the final four, and they were all wiped out before the semi-finals!
The best result of the whole team was Ma Wenge and Wang Yonggang who reached the top eight; then, there was no follow-up.
The tournament was a carnival for Europeans, because they were all in the top four places in men's singles; but at the same time, Waldner, who had just achieved the first Grand Slam in the history of table tennis, and the world champion teammate Perlson and others also suffered Waterloo, and the Swedish men's team, which won the team's three consecutive championships, also lost in the singles field.
In the end, only Lao Wa reached the semi-finals in Sweden, and then lost to the unreasonable playing master, Belgium's Sever, who did not have the opportunity to lift the St. Brede Cup for the second time four years in advance. And Sever then lost to another unreasonable grandmaster, Gaiting, and as a result, the French dominated the table tennis world for the first time in history and became the "strongest on the surface" table tennis player!
Do you know this history of that year? Let's take a look back!
In 1993, the world of men's table tennis, the undercurrent surged.
On the one hand, with the strongest opponent of national table tennis, Waldner, easily winning the men's singles championship at the Barcelona Olympics the previous year, Sweden's hegemony has reached its peak, but he himself has also shown signs of prosperity and decline, losing the team's only one point in the team final and losing to the national table tennis "brother" Ma Wenge.
On the other hand, other European players have gradually mastered the essence of the arc ball play in the organic glue era, and have begun to innovate and develop, thus achieving overtaking in the corners, leaving the two major table tennis teams in China and Switzerland behind!
Yes, the world's most advanced technology at that time was neither in the hands of the national table tennis nor mastered by Lao Wa, but belonged to two other athletes, who were:
France's Gaytin, Belgium's Sever.
Gai Ting was born in 1968, Seiff was born in 1969, slightly smaller than Waldner and Perlson, and is roughly a group of athletes with Ma Wenge, Wang Tao, Liu Nankui and Kim Taek-so, but their career trajectories are very different.
Judging from the singles results of the World Series, Gaiting and Seiffer grew up significantly slower than several masters of the same age, until 1992, when Gaiting completely broke out, defeating Liu Nankui and Ma Wenge in the Olympic Games, breaking into the competition with Lao Wa, and then being hanged.
As for Sever, the situation is even worse, because Belgium's table tennis foundation is not as good as France's, so his career has been bumping, and then a Chinese coach named Wang Dayong appeared, which in a sense changed Seiffer's life.
Wang Dayong is one of the many talents in the Chinese table tennis world who have gone abroad to develop, and his arrival has brought the "fast, accurate and fierce" thinking of the East to Belgium, but among his disciples, only Sever's talent is higher, so the achievement is also the greatest, and he soon stood out in the team and became a small dark horse in the European table tennis world, once beating Waldner.
But it's just a blast.
Before 1993, Sever had little influence on table tennis until the arrival of the World Table Tennis Championships in Gothenburg.
As mentioned earlier, the men's singles record of the Warring States Table Tennis in Gothenburg is unbearable, so who did everyone lose specifically? At present, the following can be found:
The first thing to introduce is not someone else, it is the famous "fat man who doesn't know the ball" - Liu Guoliang.
Although in 1992, Liu Guoliang once defeated famous players such as Waldner, it was only a cold after all. In the 1993 World Table Tennis Championships, Liu Guoliang, who was only 17 years old, was eliminated in the first round, and lost 0-3 to The Japanese player Hidefumi Masuda, stopping at the top 128 position, it is indeed too green!
Falling with Liu Guoliang in the first round, there was Zhang Lei, who played with him in the team final, who lost to South Korea's Jiang Xican; then in the second round, Xie Chaojie lost, 1-3 to Germany's Franz, Wang Hao lost to South Korea's Kim Taek-so, stopping in the round of 64; in the fourth round, Olympic champion Wang Tao broke the sand and lost 2-3 to Belgian Andrews.
As a result, the men's team was left with only Ma Wenge and Wang Yonggang to continue to move forward.
As for the Swedish side, it is also very unsatisfactory: after the last champion Perlson made a threat in the team competition and defeated Wang Tao, the singles were actually out of the first round like Liu Guoliang! Veteran Apeilen lost to Japan's Kiyoshi Saito in the second round; Linde met Ma Wenge in the third round and was swept 3-0.
And the carlsson who made the first contribution in the team final also fell in the first round, the reason why he had to pull out alone was because the athlete who defeated him was only 17 years old at the time, not famous, but later became famous in table tennis, he is still playing in the world champion "evergreen" on the field - Samsonov!
As Liu Guoliang's peer, Samsonov's debut at the World Table Tennis Championships was significantly better, coming up to beat the main player of the Swedish team, and later advanced to the round of 16, but unfortunately he then met The Gaiting, who was at the peak of his form, and the two sides twice played 20-20 after the draw, but unfortunately, Xiao Sa finally lost 1-3 on aggregate and did not have the opportunity to enter another round.
In the quarter-finals, Ma Wenge and Sefer fought inextricably, but unfortunately they lost 2-3 in the end - the previous year's Olympic Games, he lost to Gaiting in 5 sets; this time, he lost to Sefer in 5 sets. These two defeats illustrate a sad truth:
The strongest athlete in the national table tennis singles at that time was still slightly inferior to the top Players in Europe.
As for Wang Yonggang's words, it goes without saying that he was able to score in the top eight, and then met the fierce and stable Croatian star Primorac, and the result was 1-3 disarming: Xiaopu could score 2 points in sweden at the World Table Tennis Championships two years ago, and Waldner could not find the north, and Wang Yonggang's loss to him was not unjust.
On the other hand, Andrews, who eliminated Wang Tao, tangled with Gaiting in the decider, and the result was a 2-3 defeat, which failed to stop the Frenchman's progress. And South Korea's famous Kim Taek-so met with the old enemy Waldner, and as a result, he lost worse than the Olympic Games this time, not only was the total score 0-3 swept, but also the average score was only 9 points per game!
Later, Kanazawa Su once said that the athlete he most admired was Lao Wa, and he was indeed subdued by the other party!
But then, Lao Wa will also be "taught to be a man".
In the semi-final battle, facing Sever, who was also his "fan", Waldner actually lost 0-3, did not win a round, and lost to the sky!
In the face of Seiffer's unreasonable way of playing, Waldner is also speechless: as soon as he serves, the other party does not look at it and rushes to attack; he pulls the ball up, and the other party pulls back without looking; as long as the quality of the shot is slightly reduced, Seiffer is like a desperate pick, a violent fight, a violent pull, and there is no order to speak of!
In the old days, coaches would tell athletes that there would be a lot of mistakes like this; but Sever just risked mistakes to force a force, but he won more than he lost!
It seems unreasonable, but in fact, it is in line with the trend of the times.
Because a new technological revolution has arrived.
Since the 70s, after twenty years of equipment progress, especially the development of organic glue and anti-glue materials, the world table tennis has entered the era of the upper spinning ball dominating everything, so as long as the ball is slightly high and introduced, it can be used to solve the battle with the technology related to the spinning ball - do not hesitate, you can't lose, you can't be deceived!
This is the essence of unreasonable play!
In fact, as long as you look back and compare the table tennis game videos before and after 93, you will find that before this, there were a lot of extra actions when the athletes pulled the ball, which directly led to a lot of waste of power during the attack, and the limbs could not be effectively restored after the attack, etc., and these were the remnants of the previous era.
Starting from the 93rd World Table Tennis Championships, with the popularity of unreasonable play, arc ball technology began to become more concise and efficient, as long as the height and length are enough, everyone no longer has to have any entanglement to change how to deal with all kinds of balls, just pull on the line!
Before this, Waldner and others had partially achieved this goal, but there were still too many old-time imprints in the technical movements, and all this made him taste the bitter fruit at the 93 World Table Tennis Championships, was beaten by Sever, and then began a three-year long stage of technological transformation.
And three years later, he will shake the entire table tennis arena again, leaving an invincible legend! But these are all afterwords, and we will elaborate on them later.
As for The guys and Primorats, the fight was also very intense, and in the end, It was Gai Ting who won 3-2 and successfully reached the final stage.
In fact, Primorat's technology has kept up with the trend of the times, the action is one board at a glance, and the essence of the spinning ball play is closed, so it can shine in the international arena before. But in the era of organic glue, the most powerful upturned ball always belongs to the forehand, and Primorats is a forehand steady, backhand fierce athlete, then it is a bit inferior.
In this way, Sever and Gaiting will meet in the final stage, and a real peak battle will begin!
As the same master of unreasonable play, The techniques of Gaiting and Sever are both similar and obviously different.
Both were sharp forehand players, very decisive in their shots, and often played many return balls that seemed incredible at the time, which was jaw-dropping.
However, from the specific details of the analysis, the painting style of these two athletes is completely different:
Sever played brilliantly in every link, but he couldn't remember when he really wanted to say that he had any killer skills; and Gaiting had a veritable "killing board" ball - his forehand was really fast to pull the high point arc speed, and the backhand, although not strong, was left-handed, so there was a plate of forehand rushing quality close to that of the average right-handed, which also gave him the advantage.
In short, Gating and Sever's balls are very unreasonable to other opponents, but if you compare them, Gaiting seems even more unreasonable!
It was another five-set battle, and as a result, Gaiting has always been in the overall score lead, and finally laughed at the end of the decider 21-18, winning the victory of this unreasonable internal peak duel, and also won the supreme glory for the French table tennis world!
A year later, the two will meet in the men's singles final of the 1994 World Cup, resulting in a 3-2 victory for Gating, and Sever missed the best time to become a world champion. After that, with the further in-depth study of arc playing, Gaiting and Sever, who once dominated for a time, will also quickly lag behind the times, but their contributions will be forever remembered by future generations!
In this way, the men's singles field of the 1993 World Table Tennis Championships ended with the Europeans winning a complete victory and winning the top four in one go, and the national table tennis lost miserably and once again missed the championship.
However, this time the men's team is not alone, because in that women's singles competition, our national team was also a series of defeats, and finally did not even enter the final, so that the South Korean won the gold medal - these have little to do with the serialization of this article, and I will have the opportunity to tell it in detail later.
Here's some digression.
The fiasco of the World Table Tennis Championships in Gothenburg has made the Chinese table tennis scene once again see the unstoppable european cross-cutting two-sided anti-rubber arc ball play, and many people have also questioned:
When will we be able to produce such a powerful cross-sectional athlete?
After the end of the 1992 Olympic Games, Ma Wenge's state has begun to decline, and it is difficult to count on it; and he only changed from raw glue to anti-glue in his youth, which is naturally not so compatible with the new trend.
And after the Ma Cultural Revolution, who will pick up the beams of this sect?
This glory will belong to the child who has just returned from abroad.
Since the fiasco of national table tennis in the late 1980s, all people in China's table tennis community have been thinking about a question, that is, in which direction will the future table tennis world develop?
It was also at this time that Cai Zhenhua put forward his own views:
The future will be the era of spinning balls!
Yes, years of experience in Europe, as well as the strength of athletes such as Waldner, let Lao Cai see the advanced points of the opponent, so after becoming the coach of the men's team, he and the Table Tennis Association decided to send our young generals to Europe to play and study, and the child was in it.
Yes, you read that right, there is only news of foreign athletes coming to China to study table tennis, and I have never seen the Chinese side do the opposite. But in the early 90s, we were so weak that we had to go to Europe to learn art like Old Wa came to China to learn art.
And where the kid went was the Kalmar Club in Sweden. There, he began to practice in cypriots and seriously studied the European way of playing arc ball. But the embarrassing thing is that he just returned to China, the Swedes planted a heel at the World Table Tennis Championships, there have been new changes in table tennis technology, and foreign masters have created new unreasonable play routines.
In the end, the child combined what he had learned abroad with the Tong Zi Gong he had practiced in China, and finally embarked on a maverick development path.
Three years later, he will shock the world at the age of 19, and will not only achieve the same achievements as Waldner, but also become a milestone figure in China's horizontal shooting, but he has completely withdrawn from table tennis in a very dramatic way and has no signs of returning.
Who is he? Did you guess that? Welcome to leave a message to write the answer!
Original title: "Grand Slam Waldner (17): Unreasonable Play Dominates The Table Tennis Arena! Zhong, Rui suffered a heavy blow" - the series is not finished to continue, welcome to continue to pay attention!