The 2024 Astana Asian Championships is in full swing, with Sun Yingsha's retirement, the intensive schedule of the main players of the national table tennis team for nearly 2 months has also aroused heated discussions among countless fans, and the most tired of this is, of course, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha, as the world's No. 1 men's singles and women's singles players, have played an important role in the national table tennis team since the Paris Olympics
For example, both of them competed in singles, team and mixed doubles at the Paris Olympics, and after the Olympics, the two went on to compete in the Macau Championships, the Beijing Grand Slam and the Asian Championships in Astana
First of all, Wang Chuqin, he lost 1-4 to Lin Shidong in Macau to stop the men's singles semifinals, and then lost to Denmark's Linde in the Beijing Grand Slam to stop the men's singles round of 32, and now at the Astana Asian Championships, Wang Chuqin lost to the 14-year-old Iran child Faraj in the first round of the men's team, followed by Sun Yingsha, she is definitely the "super model" of the entire Chinese table tennis national team, even Wang Chuqin will miss the Montpellier Championship in France in October, and Sun Yingsha is following the Paris Olympics, The only national table tennis player who played all 8 international competitions in the second half of the year, not counting the National Championships held in Ordos in Mongolia in October, she will represent the Hebei team, so seeing this, some fans want to ask, where did the Paris Olympic women's singles champion Chen Meng and the men's singles champion Fan Zhendong go?
Simply talking about Chen Meng, she may choose to retire, and now Chen Meng is only one step away from the World Table Tennis Championships women's singles gold medal from the Grand Slam, but judging from various signs after the Olympics, even if Chen Meng does not withdraw from the national team, there is a high probability that she will take a back seat and gradually give up the women's singles qualification, so in the Los Angeles Olympic cycle, Wang Manyu's women's singles responsibility will become bigger and bigger
The other is Fan Zhendong, first of all, Fan Zhendong has personally said that he will not retire, so fans do not need to guess this, the main question now is why Fan Zhendong chose to be absent from international competitions for a long time after the Olympics, he is the same as Chen Meng, after winning the singles gold medal at the Paris Olympics, he has successively missed the Macau station, the Beijing Grand Slam station and the Astana Asian Championships, and more importantly, from the list of participants announced by the World Table Tennis Federation, Fan Zhendong will continue to miss WTT's Montpellier in France and Frankfurt in Germany
However, what is even more surprising is that the mixed team World Cup held in Chengdu in December has now announced the list of national table tennis participants, the women's team list is Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi and Kuo Man, and the men's team list is Wang Chuqin, Liang Jingkun, Lin Shidong and Lin Gaoyuan, that is to say, this time Fan Zhendong and Ma Long withdrew together!
The 36-year-old Ma Long's withdrawal is understandable, after all, after the Beijing Grand Slam, Ma Long made it clear that this is very likely to be his last international competition, and in the future, Ma Long may be like Xu Xin, temporarily only playing domestic competitions like the National Championships, but why did Fan Zhendong withdraw one after another? Was it your own intention or was it intentionally arranged by the team? We don't know this, you must know that Fan Zhendong has made it clear that he will not retire yet, for example, when "Table Tennis World" interviewed Fan Zhendong after the Paris Olympics, he asked him if this trip was perfect? Fan Zhendong claimed: He has also been thinking about what perfection is, is it to put every champion together like a puzzle? Of course, as long as I stay on the field, then this perfection does not exist, because I will definitely keep going!
There is also a possibility that Fan Zhendong wants to give himself a long vacation, because now in terms of honor, after winning the men's singles gold medal at the Paris Olympics, Fan Zhendong unlocked the achievement of the national table tennis super slam, and became the third person in the history of table tennis to become the third super slam in table tennis history, so Fan Zhendong has been on vacation for more than 2 months, such as playing football with friends, watching Taylor Swift's concert and participating in the tennis activities of "Federer's Super Best Friends Night".
And Fan Zhendong has been away from the arena for a long time, and it is not the first time he has done so, in 2022, Fan Zhendong has not played for 7 months, and the world ranking has dropped directly from first to fourth, and he was also deducted 1400 points by the World Table Tennis Federation, but then he still completed the return of the king, and won the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships men's singles championship, men's doubles championship and the 2024 Paris Olympics men's singles championship and men's team championship, so let's wait and see!