The 2020 Men's Table Tennis World Cup will kick off tomorrow (November 13), and outstanding players from all continents will gather in Weihai, Shandong Province, to compete for this year's championship gold medal.
It is regrettable that a famous player who once won the tournament three times has now lost his qualifications, and an era he represents is gradually disappearing into the long river of history - who? The 44-year-old Belarusian veteran Samsonov is also! Do you remember his former glory?
Born in 1976 and the same age as Liu Guoliang, Samsonov is a table tennis star who rose to prominence in the mid-1990s, more than two decades ago. In history, Samsonov has won the men's table tennis World Cup three times, second only to the national table tennis player Ma Lin, and what is more admirable is that Samsonov's 3 summits are the top masters who have won the Chinese team in a row:
In the 1999 World Cup, Samsonov defeated Kong Linghui in the group stage; in the 2001 World Cup, Samsonov swept Wang Liqin in the final; in the 2009 World Cup, Samsonov won ma Long and Chen Xuan consecutively, and reached the top again at the age of 33, which also became the oldest record in history to win a singles world championship!
Until 2019, Samsonov also participated in the World Cup, and after the arrival of 2020, he once again threatened, defeating the world champion Lin Gaoyuan of national table tennis. But as he grew older, his performance did deteriorate, and he eventually disappeared from the 2020 World Cup roster.
Although it did not qualify for this year's World Cup, from the current situation, Lao Sa seems to have no intention of retiring at all, and next year will most likely participate in the Tokyo Olympic Games, when everyone can see the veteran of Liu Guoliang and Kong Linghui to fight again. And regardless of the outcome of the game, we wish him the joy of table tennis and continue to write the myth of the "evergreen tree"!
Come on!