12 athletes from the Chinese men's B Team competed for the 6 spots on the upcoming Team A promotion competition. Zhang Yudong, Kong Lingxuan, Song Xu, Zhao Zihao, Xu Haidong and Niu Guankai earned their chance to compete against the bottom 4 athletes from the A Team and may be promoted to the A Team while Li Yijie and Fang Yinchi the bottom 2 players were sent back to their provincial teams.
The 12 athletes were divided into 2 groups with the 96-97-born in Group A and the post-98 in Group B. The top 4 from Group A and the top 2 from Group B would join the bottom 4 athletes from Team A, Cui Qinglei, Lyu Xiang, Ren Hao and Zhu Cheng, in the Team A promotion competition which will take place on 12-14 October. The national team will also select 3 athletes born in 2001-2003 from the provincial teams to join Team B on 9-11 September.
Results for Group A
Results for the bottom 8 athletes of the A Team
So far, there are no videos about the competition. We will keep you updated about the upcoming promotion competition.
Click here to complete a short survey to share your views about the blog.
Source: Table Tennis World
What I'd like to know is what happens to Yan An, Zhou Yu and Fang Bo.
ReplyDeleteThey probably won't play many ITTF international tournaments. Now what? Same thing for Hao Shuai career over? How do they make a living? Local coaching?
I do not think their career is over. Fang Bo and Zhou Yu will be playing at the Qatar Open as I know and I think the 3 players are still very competitive in the national team. I believe they will stick around for another few years till 2021 but anything can happen. I am no insider.
DeleteAs for Hao Shuai has left the national team since 2013 but he is still active in the world of table tennis as an athlete. I think the reasons for him to keep on training is that his hometown, Tianjin would host the 2017 National Games and competing in front of the home crowd at the Games is an once-in-a-life-time experience. However, I am have no idea what is his plan after the 2017 National Games and CTTSL.
There are many table tennis competitions (other than CTTSL) in China and I think winning prize money in those competitions will make up part of his living.