If China has the greatest grasp of the gold medal in which event at the Olympic Games, it must be table tennis, which has become the self-reserved place of the Chinese team, the gold medal has been assigned to China early, and other countries have worked hard for the silver medal.
Table tennis entered the Olympic Games not too early, in 1988, Seoul, table tennis for the first time on the Olympic stage. By the 2012 London Olympic Games, 7 Olympic Games had produced 28 gold medals, and the national table tennis team had won 24 of them, of which the gold medals in women's singles and men's doubles (replaced by men's teams since 2008) had never been left behind. It was the men's doubles event that won the first Olympic table tennis gold medal for China, and at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, after losing the men's singles gold medal, Chen Longcan and Wei Qingguang achieved a breakthrough of zero in the Olympic Games for Chinese table tennis.
Chen Longcan, born in Sichuan in 1965, joined the Sichuan team in 1978 and was selected for the national table tennis training team in 1981. In national table tennis competitions, Chen Longcan repeatedly defeated the main players of the national team Cai Zhenhua and Xie Saike as a young player, but it was not until 1983 that Chen Longcan entered the national team. In 1985, he became the second main force of the national team, winning the men's team championship in the 38th World Table Tennis Championships that year. In 1985, Chen Longcan did something that was a sensation at the time - plastic surgery, he raised the bridge of his nose and cut his double eyelids. Since then, Chen Longcan's sports career has also "changed its face": in 1986, the World Cup men's singles champion, in 1987, the Eurasian confrontation men's singles champion, followed by the 1988 Olympic men's doubles champion. Chen Longcan said, "I have found someone to see the photo, plastic surgery will bring me luck, and it is also good for my development." By all accounts, I did it later. I am very fatalistic, I believe in these things, it should be your long-term destiny, heaven is just. ”
Wei Qingguang was born on July 2, 1962 in Nanning, Guangxi. At the age of 8, he entered the municipal amateur sports school, began to receive professional training in 1972, and entered the Guangxi team. In order for his son to enter the Guangxi team, Wei Qingguang's father, who had been a soldier, ran to the Guangxi team and issued a military order to the team: "If you want to train him to death, then I am responsible." In 1984, Wei Qingguang represented Guangxi and won the national team, men's singles and mixed doubles championships, and the following year won the national men's doubles championship and entered the national team. In 1986, at the Asian Table Tennis Championships in Seoul, Wei Qingguang won the men's singles championship. Since then, Wei Qingguang has begun to gain a foothold in the national team.
At the 39th World Table Tennis Championships in New Delhi, India, in 1987, the first pairing of Wei Qingguang and Chen Longcan unexpectedly won the men's doubles championship, reversing the embarrassing situation that the Chinese team did not have a men's doubles champion in previous World Table Tennis Championships. However, due to the limitation of the number of Olympic participants, the world champion combination of Wei Qingguang and Chen Longcan was dismantled. There were differences within the national team about the way the men's doubles team was paired, and Wei Qingguang himself wanted to match Chen Longcan until the last training camp before the Olympic Games in February 1988, when the two were regrouped to participate in the Seoul Olympic Games.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, table tennis was included in the Olympic event for the first time, with four gold medals. However, unexpectedly, the men's singles, which is very sure to win the gold, lost to the local players and did not win the championship, which made the men's doubles, which originally had no absolute advantage, become a project that must win gold. Under the pressure of only winning and not losing, Chen Longcan and Wei Qingguang, in the case of losing the first set, reversed the victory over the Yugoslav players Lubrescu and Tulinow Raz to win the gold medal, which was the first Olympic gold medal won by the Chinese table tennis team and one of the only five gold medals of the Chinese team in this Olympic Games. Chen Longcan and Wei Qingguang retired around 1991, and after retiring, both chose to play in Japan, but the two took completely different paths.
In 1991, Chen Longcan was sent to the Yamaha Club in Japan as a coach and player through the Sports Committee, stayed for 3 years from 1992, and in 1995 the Yamaha Club was dissolved due to financial problems, and Chen Longcan went to a bank team for three years as a coach and player. At the end of 1998, he moved to Nissan. At the 1999 World Club Table Tennis Championships, the 34-year-old Chen Longcan defeated Liu Guoliang and Wang Tao, the main players of the Chinese national team at the time. In 2000, Chen Longcan went to the club with "porcelain doll" Fukuhara Ai, but less than a year ago.
According to the regulations, after working in Japan for five years, you can apply for Japanese citizenship. However, Chen Longcan never applied for Japanese citizenship because he believed that as a Chinese, he could not represent other countries in the confrontation with the Chinese team. The reason for this goes back to an experience he had at the Seoul Olympics: in the men's singles group stage, he was strongly blocked by overseas corps and nearly lost the game. In 2001, Chen Longcan resolutely returned to China under the call of the Sichuan Table Tennis Team, and later Chen Longcan finally did not participate in the competition. He said: "I read the original competition letter, which clearly stated that I could not study and was not allowed to go abroad during my tenure as a head coach. I studied for a year and graduated in another year. Learn this thing, you can't give up halfway. Therefore, he did not become a Sichuan men's table tennis coach, but went to the Sichuan women's team as a team leader, and graduated from the School of Business Administration of Southwest University of Finance and Economics at the age of 40, and was specially appointed as an associate professor by the School of Physical Education of Xihua University in 2010, and later promoted to professor. In August 2015, Chen Longcan was invited to the United Arab Emirates as the head coach of the country's table tennis team.
Wei Qingguang also retired from the Chinese national team in 1991 and went to Kumamoto, Japan, where he played for Shouya until 2001. In 1997, Wei Qingguang became a Japanese citizen, changed his name to Weiguan Qingguang, and represented Japan in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. From 1991 to 2006, Harumi Yoshimitsu Won the All Japan Men's Singles Championship four times; Japan's Top 12 Championship five times; won the All Japan Social Singles Championship twice; won the Japan League Round of 32 Individual Championships three times, and set a record of winning the All Japan Men's Singles Championship at the age of 42. Chen Longcan has been the no.1 of the Japanese men's team for 10 years, the coach of the Japanese men's team for 4 years, and the 14-year-old rising star Niwa Takashi has been trained in half a year. After Wei Qingguang, Chen Longcan, Qiao Hong, Li Huifen and other Olympic champions and world champions successively went to Japan to play, and he was the only one who remained to develop in the end.
In 2007, Wei Qingguang, who had played for 30 years, chose to retire, and nearly 100 former teammates and coaches came from all over China and Japan, including former world men's singles champion Shigeo Ito, famous takao Nodaira, Masahiro Maehara, as well as Japanese men's team coach Yoshihito Miyazaki and Koji Matsushita, and Representatives of China also brought a video of Xu Yinsheng, former chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association. Wei Qingguang, who has been an athlete for 30 years, was full of emotions at the hanging auction party and shed tears several times. Wei Qingguang also resigned as the head coach of the Japanese men's team and transferred to Aomori Yamada Academy in Japan as a coach. In 2012, Wei Qingguang opened his own table tennis hall in Japan, and he also owns his own sporting goods company.