10 athletes fighting for 4 spots on the men's A Team. It is a career-changing moment, a chance to move up the ranks and a stepping stone to becoming world champion. It is also an unpredictable competition, a close match, a brutal contest. After 3 days of round-robin competition, Ren Hao, Zhao Zihao, Niu Guankai and Zhang Yudong earned the precious spots on the men's A Team.
If you have missed the previous post about the internal competition, or just casually googled table tennis and somehow ended up here, the gist of the internal competition can be summed up here:
- In the Team B internal competition, 6 out of 12 Team B members (Zhao Zihao, Kong Lingxuan, Song Xu, Zhang Yudong, Xu Haidong and Niu Guankai) earned their chance to compete in the A Team promotion competition
- 8 members of Team A played a round robin and the bottom 4 (Cui Qinglei, Lyu Xiang, Ren Hao and Zhu Cheng) joined the promotion competition
- 3 provincial team athletes Cao Yantao, Xiang Peng and Kuang Li made their way to the national B team after a 12-athlete round-robin national team selection competition
- A total of 10 athletes fought for the 4 spots on Team A and Ren Hao, Zhao Zihao, Niu Guankai and Zhang Yudong secured their spot on the A Team
Here are the results of the competition
Ren Hao, a name that you might not have heard of as he has been contributing behind the scene rather than winning medals for the team on international stage. The right-handed shakehander entered Team Henan at age 11 in 2006. He moved up to the national men's A Team in 2013 and has assigned to be the practice partner of the women's team since 2014. One of his more known match is the match between him and Li Xiaoxia at the 2016 Olympics Warm-up match where he imitated Singapore's Yu Mengyu. Apart from being a practice partner, Ren Hao worked hard to prove himself in national competitions. He was the bronze medalist of the men's singles at 2015 Youth National Games and led Team Henan to enter the quarterfinals of the men's team competition at the 2017 National Games.
The men's A Team welcome one more penholder, Zhao Zihao. The 1997-born right-handed penholder from Team Shanghai has been a crucial team player for the 4-time national team champion. He made his name out there at 2014 National Championships winning Zhang Jike in the team semifinals. In 2015 and 2016 National Championships, he helped Team Shanghai to secured the team champion at the last match. He had a mediocre performance at the first stage of the team event at 2017 National Games and the team even took him out in one of the matches. However he came back strong in stage 2 and won the men's team champion alongside with his Shanghai teammates. He mentioned the team champion at the National Games gives him the confidence to play well in the promotion competition and he is in A Team again since being relegated to the B Team in 2016. We hope him would learn from the experience in the team competitions and improve his results in the singles events in the future.
Niu Guankai, the 2002-born newbie of the B Team, entered the national team this August after winning the cadet boys' singles national champion at the Cadet National Championships. In less than 2 months, he defeated numbers of national team athletes and rocketed to the A Team at lightning speed. Some fun facts about this competition, Niu Guankai got involved in table tennis partly because of his cousin, Ren Hao, who also secured his spot in the A Team in the promotion competition. Check our Y2Klub article to learn more about Niu Guankai the youngest member of the national A Team here.
The 4th spot of the men's A Team went to Zhang Yudong of Team Jiangsu. 21-year-old Zhang Yudong is an aggressive and expressive athletes. He won the men's doubles champion at the 2015 Youth National Games and placed 4th in men's doubles at 2017 National Games. He could be very competitive when he has a good day but he might need to work on his consistency. Here is an exciting match he played against Fan Zhendong in 2016 CTTSL.
The post-national games period is usually the peak time for athletes leaving the national team / retiring from the sport. Some may enjoy the glorious retirement ceremony in 2014 shown in the following video but most of them simply fade out from our sights eventually.
Several athletes have left the national team for different reasons recently. They are Liu Yi, the chopper who won men's singles champion at 2013 Universiade and men's team champion in 2013 and 2015 (watch him at 2015 men's team final), and Liu Jikang who won Ma Long at 2016 CTTSL (click here to watch the match) from the A Team; and Li Yijie and Fang Yinchi, who competed in the 2017 Czech Open recently, from the B Team. Some of them might consider being a coach or competing for another country to realize their dreams. Whereas some may try other ways to return to the national team, as mentioned in the following interview, former-national team athlete Cheng Jingqi strives for being the top 8 in the singles event of the National Games and National Championships to make his way back to the national game.
Love it or hate it, this is the new order of the Chinese National Team and how it came to be. Depth is a bittersweet issue to have and, in this case, Xu Haidong, Song Xu, Lyu Xiang, Kong Lingxuan, Zhu Cheng and Cui Qinglei could not make the A Team this year because they have the opposite of a good day or are slightly less competitive to their compatriots. They have tried their best, but at the end of the day, the spots on Team A are too few to include all the talented players.
This month is a testament to just how deep this current junior Chinese field actually is. Check these links to catch up the Chinese A-League (Division 1), Men's B Team internal competition, the national team selection competition, Team A promotion competition and the Chinese Junior National Championships coming up. For more information, follow the blog.
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