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.
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.
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.
There is a Chinese saying, "As in the Yangtze River, the waves behind ride on the ones before" which implies the younger generations excel the old. We are seeing more and more players of the millennial generation showing up in the international scene. The Y2Klub series will introduce the next generation of Chinese players, mostly the post 00's. Follow the series to learn about China's future World champion hopefuls!
When the Japanese are sending groups of promising young athletes to compete in various competitions, Team China won 1 gold medal only in 2016 WJTTC. Some cried out that China has ran out of juniors based on the their performance in 2016 WJTTC, which is too bad, but calm down, this performance won't set the tone for the rest of the quad. The depth of the Chinese team is pretty sweet. Niu Guankai is one of the exquisitely-talented juniors.
