A week ago, the young generation of Chinese badminton, with an average age of only 23 years old, won the Sudirman Cup.
Today they are standing on the field of the Tangyou Cup again. This time, the team lineup was further expanded, and more post-00s young people will enter the big list. Led by Olympic champions and shouldered by young players, the youngsters will take on the burden of both titles.
After winning the Su Cup, the Chinese badminton team had 7 more Xinke world champions, of which Feng Yanzhe, who was born after 00, became the first post-00s badminton world champion of the Chinese team. The team then moved from Finland to Aarhus, Denmark, to prepare for the Tongyou Cup, which was postponed for a year and a half. With the max for the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup squads adjusted from 10 to 12 in the Su Cup, more Chinese teenagers will be given the stage for the show.
In this 24-man Chinese team roster, 7 post-00s are on the list, they are Li Shifeng, Di Zijian, Wang Chang, Wang Zhiyi, Xia Yuting, Liu Xuanxuan, Han Qianxi, plus Weng Hongyang and Li Weimei, born in 1999, they will be the focus of the national feather Paris cycle.
Test the "dark horse" color
The Chinese women's team stopped in the semi-finals of the last You Cup, this time led by The New Branch Olympic champions Chen Yufei and Huang Dongping, and the Olympic runners-up Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan, and regaining the lost championship trophy is the biggest goal, of course, the goal of cultivating successors is not ambiguous.
In the first match against Canada, in addition to the one single sent He Bingjiao, the Chinese team sent a pair of Li Weimei /Zheng Yu, two singles Wang Zhiyi, two doubles Liu Xuanxuan/Xia Yuting and three singles Han Yue in the remaining four matches, and the goal of training newcomers was very obvious.
Among the women's team players, Wang Zhiyi was once a "dark horse". In 2019, she won six crowns and one hit, and the world ranking jumped from 200 to the top 20 women's singles. In 2020, she defeated world-class masters such as Ratchano and Akane Yamaguchi, and if it were not for the epidemic, she might even have snatched a place for He Bingjiao from the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Paris cycle will be her runway to regain her strength, and this time the Uber Cup will also test her "dark horse" color.
The women's doubles Li Weimei, Zheng Yu, Liu Xuanxuan and Xia Yuting will also win more opportunities, and Guo Yu hopes to emerge from them more women's doubles combinations that can stand side by side with "Fan Chen" in the international arena.
Men's singles training successors
China is the defending champion of the Thomas Cup, but at the Tokyo Olympics and the just-past Su Cup, the Chinese men's singles exposed the weakness of insufficient reserve strength. In this soup cup, most of the lineups sent by Guoyu are newcomers who participate in the soup cup for the first time, and in terms of cultivating reserve strength, Guoyu is already making efforts.
Only Shi Yuqi, Liu Cheng and Wang Yilu, the three world champions, participated in the 2018 Bangkok Thomas Cup. "Big Brother" Chen Long did not go out with the team. However, when asked in an interview who can succeed the men's singles, Chen Long once said three names, namely Shi Yuqi, Li Shifeng and Weng Hongyang, all three of whom are in the soup cup lineup.
Needless to mention, Shi Yuqi has always been regarded as the successor of the Paris cycle men's singles, and the latter two are relatively unfamiliar to the outside world. Li Shifeng is the 2018 Youth Olympic Badminton Men's Singles Champion and the National Badminton Championship Champion that year, and won his first adult championship in 2019 - the Canadian Open Badminton Championships Men's Singles Champion. Weng Hongyang attracted attention because he defeated many local masters at the Lingshui Badminton Masters two years ago. During the Tokyo Olympic cycle, he was transferred to the national training team.
Because of the epidemic, Li Shifeng and Weng Hongyang have rarely won the opportunity to compete in international competitions since the summer of 2019, and whether they can seize the opportunity of this soup cup is also the focus of the coaching team of Guoyu.
The reorganization of the men's doubles has begun from the Su Cup, and the soup cup trial will continue. According to the schedule, the Tang Cup and You Cup group stage will be interspersed between October 9 and 14, the You Cup final will be held on the 16th, and the Soup Cup final will be held on the 17th, whether the Chinese team can achieve the goal of winning the championship, whether the young players can set off a youth storm, then the answer will be revealed.
Editor: Ge Wanli