The preliminary stage of the 2019 Chinese National Championships commenced on 6 May, in Meihekou, Jilin. Only the men's team and women's team events are played at the 7-day tournament and the top 8 teams of each event will advance to the main round which will be held from 25 July to 2 August in Tianjin, China.
A total of 59 teams take part in the preliminary stage of the 2019 Chinese National Championships. The teams will play through the round-robin in the group stage and the best 4 teams of each group will make to the knockout stage which is scheduled over the weekend on 11-12 May. The top 8 finishing teams will join the top 16 teams from the 2018 Chinese National Championships in the main round to contend for the national title.
Since most of the teams starred with big names have directly qualified to the main round, the preliminary round seems to be more of a testing ground for young players but there are still a few names that might catch your attention. First on the list is the PLA men's team which experienced a shocking defeat from last year after Fan Zhendong's withdrawal. The team has shown its determination in securing a spot in the main round this year and sent a very strong squad including Zhou Yu, Zhou Kai, Xu Chenhao and Zhao Zhaoyan to compete in the preliminary stage. Veteran Hao Shuai is still competing for Tianjin. He could be the evergreen of Chinese table tennis. Top Chinese defender Ma Te has switched to Hubei. He and Xue Fei play a crucial role in taking the team to the later stages. 16-year-old rising star Xiang Peng leads team Zhejiang. On the women's side, Gu Ruochen of Luneng is one to watch. You may also want to keep an eye on Sichuan's Yuan Yuan. Meanwhile, Team Beijing has a decent lineup including Guo Yuhan, Li Jiayuan and Sun Chen.
This year's Chinese National Championships comes with a twist as the team events are no longer played with the Swaythling Cup system (best-of-5 singles) instead, for the first time, the Chinese National Championships adopts the new Olympic playing system, meaning that a team match will start with a doubles match followed by 4 singles matches. Teams with a strong pair of doubles will benefit from the new playing system.
Check live streams & replays (6 May, 7 May, 8 May, 9 May, 10 May, 11 May, 12 May) at 09:00, 14:00, 16:00 (GMT+8), schedule and live scoring from the respective links while I have no clue for the official roster for each team. For more details of last year's Chinese National Championships click here.
Qualified Teams
Source: CTTA
Hi Table Tennis Fan
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting. I look forward to the main round of the tournament soon :-)
Do you know if there is a result book available (pdf or likewise) for the team prelims?
And do you know which players have qualified for the singles and doubles events - and how?
Kind regards
Stef
Hi Stef,
DeleteIt's very unfortunate that the result book for team prelims is inaccessible at this moment. Hopefully, CTTA will fix the link soon. http://www.ctta.cn/ssxx/2019/0409/230722.html
There are still possible ways to track down the results for team prelims such as piecing up information from the news report and weibo updates but it's going to be a tedious work of compilation. Since the top Chinese athletes did not compete in the prelims and the most concerned piece of information is the qualified teams. The article has stated teams that have qualified through the prelims.
As far as I know, this year's nationals will be scale down to 5 events, teams compared to 7 in the past. The men's and women's doubles events are dropped, possibly because these are non-Olympic events. The qualified teams will have the quota to send players to compete in singles and mixed doubles events. The upcoming article will include more details regarding the Nationals.
The organizer has recently posted the seedings of each event but the list remains tentative because some of the top Chinese might withdraw after a series of World Tour and T2 competitions. We will update the blog as soon as the entry has confirmed.
Lastly, thank you for your comment and support!
Regards,
Table Tennis Fan