On the day after the 12-man roster was officially released, all the Chinese table tennis players headed to Pengcheng City, Guangdong Province.
Yes, "Top 12 Invitational" is not held in the imperial capital, but it is different every time. This is because this World Table Tennis Championships internal selection competition, which was originally just for the principle of fairness, has become one of the most successful commercial events in the Chinese table tennis world because it was so successful and the domestic fans were so vocal.
This year, it is co-sponsored by the Chinese Table Tennis Association, the four bureaus of Pengcheng City Culture, Radio and Television, Sports, and Tourism, and domestic Internet giant Penguin Sports.
Today's Luohu Stadium was bustling with people, and all the open seats were basically occupied. The director panned the camera all the way from the auditorium, and the fans at the scene burst into exclamations, because there were so many big figures in the table tennis world coming to watch the game.
Most of the coaches and players of the Pengcheng City Table Tennis Team were sitting in the stands, as were most of the coaches and players of the Guangdong Provincial Table Tennis Team. In addition, there were sports media people from various provinces and cities, independent media people, as well as several coaches and sparring partners from Chinese National Table Tennis Team, as well as national team players who were not selected for the 12-man roster, and then there were relevant leaders at all levels in the sports circle.
There were even many foreigners shouting excitedly, although they couldn't understand what they were shouting at all.
Among these people are die-hard foreign fans, as well as professional players from non-Chinese associations.
It can be said that the "Surface Direct Tournament" has long become a major event in the Chinese table tennis world and even the world table tennis world. Although it does not have medals or honors, the pure technical content of this event is even higher than the three major competitions.
Why?
Because the three major competitions pit Chinese players against foreign players, while the direct competition is a civil war between Chinese players.
"The national championship is more difficult to win than World Champion." This sentence has long been the consensus of China Table Tennis players.
That being the case, this means that the current top 12 players in Huaping are fighting each other, and the final winner is naturally the well-deserved strongest player on the planet.
You see, the name of the event actually says it all.
But what really excites the fans today are actually two points.
The first is today's live broadcast commentator, Qin Huachang.
In previous years, there were usually two arrangements for the on-site commentary of the direct surface competition. One was to directly send people from China Television, and most of the time they were Yi Jing and Grasshopper. Another option is to directly find retired former professional players to make guest appearances.
But this year is a special situation. Qin Huachang has entered the live broadcasting circle and is unrivaled. Although it has only been a few months, he has become the uncrowned king of the table tennis live broadcasting circle. He is known as the world's number one professional table tennis commentator. This title is not reserved by Chinese fans, but by fans around the world.
For such a grand event, who is more qualified to sit on the commentary stage than Qin Huachang?
Qin Huachang is from Yangcheng City, Guangdong Province. Yangcheng is only more than an hour's drive from Pengcheng. Even though this big boss is out of work due to illness, the event is delivered to his doorstep. How can he not make a guest appearance?
In the past, Qin Huachang would have hesitated. After all, there were Lin Li and Fan Xiaodong competing this time. He would have worried about gains and losses, but now he has relaxed his mind, so his son Qin Zhenyu did not stop him. Instead, he kept busy. Cooperate, because Qin Zhenyu knows that only by living in the world of table tennis can his father be full of motivation to live. If Qin Huachang is not allowed to touch table tennis, no matter how good you take care of him, and no matter how hard he takes medicine and sleeps on time, he will become a fish out of water and die of thirst.
This is a life-long fate. It is better to cut it off than to block it.
The second point that makes fans particularly excited is the specific selection method of this tournament.
The selection of the direct competition is very flexible. In the past, the coaching staff has made many strange attempts, such as elimination in the whole process, bloody battle to the end, and so on. However, the rules this time are particularly simple and bloody. It is the simplest and most simple team cycle, and it is a two-round cycle.
Four days, 12 players, two rounds, which means a total of 132 games will be played. This number is many times that of previous through tournaments. In addition, each game is a best-of-seven game. This results in an extremely dense event, an extremely devilish schedule, and an extremely inhumane test for the players' bodies and minds.
Similarly, due to this abnormal schedule, four tables will be played at the same time throughout the competition, and the audience can choose the game they are interested in watching. As for the main commentator Qin Huachang, he has locked the game on table one, while other commentators are on the other three tables to provide live commentary for the entire network.
In fact, the lineup of commentators for this event is unprecedentedly strong. In order to ensure that there are commentators for each game on the four tables, and considering that the commentators will also be tired and need to change their posts, the other two ace commentators of the Silver Ball Dance website, Brother Da Ma and Hou Xijia also came to the scene. Hou Xijia was responsible for taking over the duty at table 1 when Qin Huachang got tired. Brother Da Ma was young, strong and energetic, and took charge of table 2 alone with Ye Hongye.
Yi Jing and Grasshopper from China Television Sports also came. They also changed shifts and were responsible for the No. 3 table together.
As for the No. 4 table, two professionals from the local sports channel in Guangdong Province are in charge. This can be regarded as a small privilege of the host. As for whether there are fans buying it, there must be some, because the fans are interested in the players, not the commentators. If there is a classic battle on the No. 4 table, don't worry about everyone not watching it. If you think the commentators are noisy, you can at best choose to mute the sound.
Then the game officially started.
In the first round, table No. 3 was immediately shocked: Fan Xiaodong was destroyed by Zhu Ding.
Speaking of Zhu Ding's current strength, no one really knows. Just because he can meet the training needs of Luo Jiu by himself, it can be seen that he is definitely strong enough, but his performance in the Imperial Capital Panlong team against Table Tennis Super League is very strange. Pai, it's basically like riding a seesaw. At first, the coach of Dragon Team dared to let him play the second order, but later he only dared to let him play the third order. He was not considered at all when making tactical arrangements, and he was regarded as the final lottery game.
Today, in the eyes of the audience, it cannot be said that Zhu Ding played well, because from the scene, it seemed that Fan Xiaodong did not play well enough. In fact, this game was not good at all. Fan Xiaodong made frequent mistakes in offense, and Zhu Ding also made frequent mistakes in attack. In the end, both sides did not want to attack, both wanted stability, and the game was very boring. Then someone started to try to attack, and the opponent also started to try to counterattack, so they played a few more stalemate balls. After the stalemate, both sides became sluggish again, lost their fighting spirit, and entered the mutual defense stage again...
Well, what can I say? It seems like a child's play. Both sides of the game seem to be competing to see who is worse. At the same time, don't forget that the commentators in charge of Channel 3 are Yi Jing and Grasshopper. Due to the intensive schedule, these two people do not appear at the same time, but choose to play one by one. This game happens to be Grasshopper.
So you know...
Although Yi Jing is prone to divergent thinking, she is the former World Champion after all. Faced with this kind of ugly-looking game, she can make sense, but Grasshopper is really an atmosphere team, but this game has no atmosphere, so his commentary made everyone emo.
But the coaches of Huaping understand it well. In fact, the game was not as bad as it looked. On the contrary, Zhu Ding played very well.
The reason why it looked bad was because Zhu Ding was playing the most awkward ball for Fan Xiaodong throughout the whole process, without giving Fan Xiaodong a chance to release. Although Fan Xiaodong was young, he was also a smart kid. He saw through Zhu Ding's intentions and wanted to restrict Zhu Ding in turn, so the two began to hurt each other.
This kind of game that hurts each other can be very beautiful if both sides have top-level skills and super touch. For example, in April, Wang Chao played Dragon Team, and the backhand was suppressed throughout. Although there was no official attack in the whole process, the technical changes of both sides could dazzle the audience.
However, Zhu Ding and Fan Xiaodong haven't reached this level yet. Zhu Ding was a violent turtle at first, but now he has become the leader of Happy Ping Pong has never come back, but he is still not a person who does fancy things in essence. As for Fan Xiaodong, even Dragon Team criticized him for playing too easy, and he is naturally not good at doing fancy things.
So when these two rough guys started to compete in embroidery, although the competition was very valuable, from the perspective of an outsider, it was really miserable.
When the first round was basically over, two more rounds passed, and the second big upset broke out: Qi Hao cleanly swept Lin Li 4:0 on the fourth table.
This game was truly earth-shattering. Qi Hao was once extremely favored by Cai Guodong. He has both physical fitness and spirituality. However, the technical and tactical framework was not set up properly, and he finally became a strange flower. Now he is in Zhu Zeshi. was finally reborn after months of suffering. Today, he made his first appearance in front of the people of the country. He was full of fighting spirit and full of fighting spirit. This match between him and Lin Li was a pure head-on confrontation. From forehand to backhand, from close to far, they met on a narrow road and refused to give in.
It was also this game that made everyone realize that Qi Hao is really different from before.
He used to have occasional good skills and could hit the extremely amazing Unreasonable Shot, but most of the time he was full of mistakes. Many times he lost not because the opponent played well, but because he directly sent it out himself.
But today, although he was still playing violently, his condition was very stable. There were occasional fluctuations in the middle, but it was harmless. He started with a hard fight, which made Lin Li extremely uncomfortable. Then Lin Li refused to accept it and chose to fight back. The two sides fought back and forth, and then they fought again, but it was Lin Li who broke down first.
By the time the game was over, Lin Li was blushing and looking extremely aggrieved, but Qi Hao was full of surprise and couldn't believe his result, because the score difference was really huge.
Only the two coaches, Zhu Zeshi and Sun Tianlong, who were also sitting in the stands, knew that this was just a superficial phenomenon.
Lin Li is an introvert. Introverts usually tend to hold things back easily and are not easy to relieve their emotions. During this period, he suffered continuously under the hands of Wang Chao. After Brazil Open was zero-blocked by Wang Chao again, he basically despaired of Olympic Games and continued to practice hard with a little hope.
In this situation, Lin Li's mentality is actually very fragile. It's not that he can't lose, but he can't accept the fact that he is a bad person.
So even if he loses to Wang Chao again, or loses to Xiao Fei, Sun Tianlong, or even loses to Bai Feng, Fan Xiaodong, he can accept it. After all, these people are indeed very strong, and it is theoretically possible to defeat him.
But Qi Hao...
To put it bluntly, Lin Li really didn't take Qi Hao seriously. Even though he knew that Qi Hao was in special training in the past few months, he still didn't take seriously. Qi Hao takes it seriously. After all, in his opinion, any athlete's strength is gradual and there is no triple jump. What's more, Qi Hao is 25 years old, only two years younger than himself. How big a future can he have?
How many years has it been since Qiu Yinong, who is the same age as you, has been a coach? You didn't catch up until you were 25, don't you think it's too late?
With such a winning mentality, Lin Li decided to play strongly at the beginning. It would be best to crush the opponent with wind and thunder and get off to a good start.
However, he thought well, but in the end he was crushed by Qi Hao with the force of wind and thunder. How could he bear this?
Although Sun Tianlong saw all this, he had no intention of comforting Lin Li. This was because the head coach Cai Guodong had already said that during the entire direct competition, the coach was not allowed to give private guidance to his disciples.
If you must direct, then wait until the day's competition is over and say a few words at night. It is absolutely not allowed during the day.
After all, this is a civil war, everyone must abide by the rules and let the athletes perform on their own.
This rule is actually unfair to some athletes. After all, people like Bai Feng and Lin Li have long been accustomed to having a coach, while Wang Chao and Luo Jiu have long been accustomed to not having a coach. The adaptability of mental players and physical players in this situation is completely different.
But this unfairness is actually the greatest fairness, because usually everyone has a coach to help, and the advantage of the mental athlete is offset by the opponent's reliance on the coach. Only now, the advantage of the brain is truly reflected.
So it's not that it's unfair to physical athletes now, but it's been unfair to mental athletes in the past.
The game continued. In the last game of the morning, there was another big upset on table No. 2: Bai Feng killed Luo Jiu.
Thanks to "Zhong Er Muppet Boy" for the reward.