China’s youngest squad set for sweep

PARIS, Aug 1: The 1999 World Table Tennis Championships, postponed because of the Kosovo crisis, finally starts in Eindhoven, Holland on ...

PARIS, Aug 1: The 1999 World Table Tennis Championships, postponed because of the Kosovo crisis, finally starts in Eindhoven, Holland on Monday with a new-look format just a year before the Sydney Olympics.

China, who earned all four Olympic golds in Atlanta and 13 of the 14 possible golds in the 1995 and 1997 World Championships combined, can reasonably be expected to sweep all five individual gold on offer this time.China have sent its youngest team ever to the Championship and despite the retirement of reigning women’s champion and four-time Olympic gold medallist Deng Yaping, are a formidable presence.

“The men’s singles is the focus for the Chinese team at this World Championships and the team is already determined to bring the championship back to China,” head coach Cai Zhenhua told the China Sports daily.

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This championship is doubly significant because the top 20 singles players on the world list published just after the World Championships will be automatically eligible for the Olympics, butonly two from the same country.The new World No 1, Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus, a silver medallist in the Manchester Championships two years ago, Sweden’s current world champion Jan-Ove Waldner, and Croatia’s Zoran Primorac, who won the Brazilian Open in late June, form the biggest European threat to China for the men’s singles gold.

China’s men are still formidable. Olympic champion Liu Guoliang, 1995 world champion Kong Linghui, both 23, and Asian champion and 1998 International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) pro-tour finals winner Wang Liqin are the favourites from the Chinese camp.

With the retirement of Yaping, the way is open for new No 1 and Asian Games champion Wang Nan to win the women’s singles title. Wang was finalist in both singles and doubles in Manchester and a semi-finalist in the mixed doubles. The only European-born player likely to make any inroads into Chinese dominance is Croatian Open champion Tamara Boros, ranked 12th in the world.

Of the 11 players above Boros, six are in theChinese national team including the top three but even the other five are Chinese-born though now playing for different countries.

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Chinese coach Zhenhua, delighted after Chinese players won all four of the gold medals at the ITTF Pro-Tour finals in Paris in January, claimed Europe’s progress in the sport had “slowed down” in the last two years.Cai, himself a world singles silver medallist in 1981, said: “Chinese players are now generally more complete players than Europeans, whose technical and tactical development has slowed down in the last two years.”He claimed that part of the Chinese success came because of the variety of styles cultivated within their national squad.

“In this way, our players get used to European styles and also learn to compete well against our own traditional techniques,” he said.

Whether his words ring true or not will be found out during the August 2-8 World Championships in Holland where only the individual events will be contested for the first ever time. The worldteam championships will be held in Kuala Lumpur next February.