Since the announcement of the national table tennis tokyo Olympics roster, the topic of Liu Shiwen's failure to choose a singles event has been hot, and many people regret that she did not make it to a Grand Slam.
But you know what? In the history of national table tennis, some people are even more tragic than Liu Shiwen - after all, Xiao Zao has won olympic gold medals before, and this time he has not been selected for singles at all, but he still retains mixed doubles and teams, and the athlete we are going to talk about today has been on the Olympic list, but he was replaced by the coaching staff at the last moment, which is a pity!
Her name is Guo Yan.
Born in 1983, Guo Yan has served as the main team player of the World Table Tennis Championships four times (winning 3 gold medals), 4 Times world cup titles (2 times singles), and many times in Asian and national competitions.
After the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, with the decline of Wang Nan's state, Guo Yan's position in the team rose rapidly, becoming a figure who could wrestle with the new Slam advocate Yining.
In the 2005 Shanghai World Table Tennis Championships, Guo Yan and Zhang Yining met in the women's singles final, and the result was 2-4 defeat and relegated to the second place; in the 2006 World Cup, Guo Yan succeeded in revenge in the women's singles final, defeating Zhang Yining 4-3 to win the championship; in the 2010 World Cup, Guo Yan withstood the pressure and defeated Hong Kong's Jiang Huajun to win the women's singles gold medal for the second time, which shows that her strength is indeed very strong.
Especially in the final of the women's team at the 2010 Moscow World Table Tennis Championships, Liu Shiwen, who was still a rising star at the time, lost 2 points and Ding Ning lost 1 point, only Guo Yan got the only 1 point of the Chinese team, although he failed to save the defeat, but Guo Yan also became the "dinghai god needle" of the whole team, to a certain extent, filling the blank position left by Zhang Yining after retiring.
It is precisely because of her stable results that Guo Yan has also become a popular candidate for the 2012 London Olympic Games, and even after Ding Ning won the women's singles championship at the 2011 World Table Tennis Championships, she also appeared on the Olympic list of the national team as she wished.
However, less than 80 days before the start of the race, the situation changed drastically.
On May 11, 2012, the Chinese Table Tennis Association suddenly changed the list of participants, and Guo Yan, who was originally selected for the singles and team events, was no longer on the list, and was replaced by Ding Ning, the new singles champion of the World Table Tennis Championships. In the subsequent interview, Guo Yan talked about the reasons for his failure to make the list:
"Since the beginning of this year, I have been plagued by an arm injury... In the Zhongshan closure, the injury worsened, hit the closure, insisted on participating in the game... After the semi-finals of the World Table Tennis Championships, the arm injury could not be sustained, so the final was not able to play. At that time, I knew that the hope of participating in the Olympics was very slim. ”
Like Liu Shiwen this year, Guo Yan also regrettably withdrew from the Olympic competition due to injury reasons; but the difference is that Liu Shiwen was excluded from the singles list from the beginning, while Guo Yan was selected and then lost. In addition, Liu Shiwen participated in the Olympic Games in 2016, and also retained the team and mixed doubles events in 2021, but Guo Yan has never participated once!
In this way, Guo Yan finally lost touch with the Olympic Games, and soon began to gradually withdraw from all domestic and foreign competitions and training, and finally officially announced his retirement in 2014, bidding farewell to the field and never having the opportunity to go to the Olympic Arena as an athlete, leaving a lifelong regret: What a pity!
In the London Olympic Games, Ding Ning, who replaced Guo Yan, won the gold medal in the team competition with Li Xiaoxia, plus the silver medal in the singles; 4 years later, Ding Ning competed in the Rio Olympic Games again, winning 2 championships, thus becoming the fourth women's Grand Slam winner after Deng Yaping, Wang Nan, Zhang Yining and Li Xiaoxia.
But if it wasn't Ding Ning but Guo Yan in 2012, how would history change? Time cannot be turned back, time cannot be reversed, after all, life is full of accidents, but surprises always seem to come so little! Finally, I wish Liu Shiwen to seize the opportunity still in hand, achieve good results at the Tokyo Olympic Games, and win the gold medal again: come on!