Fresh Faces In Chinese Men's B Team

The rising star at 2017 National Games, Xiang Peng makes the national team!12 provincial table tennis team athletes (born in 2001-2003) from all parts of China played a round-robin competition at the Chinese National Team in the last 3 days. The national team has selected the top 3 athletes Cao Yantao, Xiang Peng and Kuang Li to join the Men's B Team. 

Here are the results of the competition.

Source: Table Tennis World

2001-born Cao Yantao of Jiangsu team ended up first in the competition, with 10 wins and 1 loss. The right-handed shakehander is particularly strong in his backhand and is a versatile player. He was the cadet boys' singles champion at 2016 China Junior & Cadet Open. Here is a video of the cadet boys' singles final where he won 3-2 over his teammate Yu Zhengyang.

Xiang Peng of Team Zhejiang placed 2nd in the national team selection competition with 8 wins and 3 losses. He made his name out there at the 2017 National Games. The 2003-born newbie won over national Team A member, Yu Ziyang and had a 5-game intense match with grand-slam athlete, Zhang Jike in stage 1 of the team competition. Click here to learn more about Xiang Peng in our Y2Klub article. Xiang Peng consistently topped the podium in provincial and regional competitions early on. In 2014, at age 11, he won 2 gold (boy's team and singles) and 1 silver (boy's doubles) at the Provincial Games of Zhejiang and won the boys' singles champion at the 2016 Nation-wide Secondary School Table Tennis competition. Here are the boys' singles finals at 2016 Nation-wide Secondary School Table Tennis competition where he won over Niu Guankai who earned the chance to play in the Team A promotion competition a few days ago.

The third spot goes to Kuang Li. Born in 2003, Kuang Li is the youngest member of the silver-medal winning team, Team Sichuan, at 2017 National Games. Although he is a non-participating athlete in the team, winning a historic silver medal with the Sichuan team is definitely an uplifting experience for him. He is one of the most exciting young penhold prospects in 2016, winning the 2016 Chinese U13  National boys' singles (Southern region) champion.

Kuang Li (first to the right) at the 2017 National Games Men's Team Award Ceremony
Photo: Table Tennis World

Congratulations to Cao Yantao, Xiang Peng and Kuang Li for winning their spots in the national team. Looking back at recent years in the junior field, there always tends to be only one or two making their name out there and the rest aren't even in the picture. We wish this will be a good start for the 3 of them and hope them achieving good results in both domestic and international competitions in the future.

The door is not completely closed for those who have missed their chance in this trials. As they can still make it to the national team if they end up top 4 in the singles event in the upcoming 2017 Chinese Junior National Championships which will take place on 20-26 October in Suzhou, China.

This month is a testament to just how deep this current junior Chinese field actually is. As after the Chinese A-League (Division 1), Men's B Team internal competition, here we have the national team selection competition, Team A promotion competition and the Chinese Junior National Championships coming up. For more information, follow the blog and click the links to catch up the competitions. 

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