Brazilian journalist Tavares, who had been silent for a long time, started his performance again.
"Can you please predict who will win this World Table Tennis Championships?"
"Of course that is our big Kimchi Country ace player Shixian Oppa."
"But player Zhu Shixian's world ranking is about to fall out of the top 20."
"How are you talking? Do you understand Oppa? Do you think it is easy to be ranked 16th? Don't you know that there is only a thin line between all the players in the top 20 in the world? Winning or losing depends on the quality of performance, and our Oppa will definitely perform his best this time."
"Who do you think is the most likely winner of this World Table Tennis Championships?"
"If nothing else, he should be the pride of our German table tennis team, the great Uncle Bai."
"Don't you think Huaping's Luo Jiu has a better chance?"
"What are you talking about? When Uncle Bai dominated the table tennis world, Luo Jiu hadn't even entered the national team yet."
"But isn't Luo Jiu's world ranking far higher than Bayer?"
"So what? If the world ranking can determine the outcome, then why do we need to play games? Budapest is a blessed place for our German table tennis players. Uncle Bai won the World Table Tennis Championships gold medal here 20 years ago. Of course he can win again this time."
"Excuse me, who do you think has a better chance of winning this World Table Tennis Championships championship, Luo Jiu or Wang Chao?"
"They don't have a chance, because the champion must be our England, and Liam. Pike is the destined champion of this World Table Tennis Championships."
"I would like to remind you that player Pike has not defeated Wang Chao and Luo Jiu in all competitions within the past year."
"So what? World Table Tennis Championships is a place where miracles are created. Our England Table Tennis Association has carefully calculated using scientific methods. The chance of Pike player winning the championship is as high as 51%."
"Who do you think will be the World Table Tennis Championships men's singles champion this year?"
"Hook."
"Who do you think will be the World Table Tennis Championships men's singles champion this year?"
"Morad."
"Who do you think will win this year's World Table Tennis Championships?"
"Lin Zijun."
Tavares gave up after interviewing for a full hour.
As a table tennis reporter who officially transitioned this year, he found that fans around the world have completely different attitudes towards the Open and the three major tournaments.
During the Open, the fans are very rational, but during the three majors, the fans are crazy.
All fans without exception claimed that their country's ace player would win the final gold medal.
Even though they know in their hearts that their country's players don't even have a 1% chance, they still have to be as tough-talking as dead ducks.
It's an attitude.
It is unconditional support for domestic players.
——Of course, except for those betting dogs who buy the odds. After all, the odds of Luo Jiu and Wang Chao are astonishingly low, proving that they are the most sensible group of people.
The scale of World Table Tennis Championships this time has reached an extremely exaggerated level. Regardless of the number of applicants, the number of participating associations, and the actual number of people arriving at Budapest, it is the highest this year.
On the night of September 27, the organizer International Table Tennis Federation and the Hungarian Table Tennis Association began to officially broadcast the grouping ceremony.
In fact, this is just the first grouping. A few days later, the final grouping will not be carried out until the qualifying rounds are completed.
This process is extremely complicated. Here is a brief introduction. If you are interested, you can take a look. If you are not interested, you can skip it.
First, the top 64 players are determined according to the world rankings to directly participate in the main competition. These players are: Luo Jiu, Hook, Lin Li, Bai Feng, Bayer, Lin Zijun, Wang Chao, k. Michel, Pike, Weng Chunting, Sissifield, Ochomirov, Zhu Shixian, Wolf, Zhang Benkuang, Li Zhengzhi, Fan Xiaodong, Morad, Qiu Shang, the Peacock Country first brother Gananaka, the Beautiful Country first brother Kazik, Daehan Minguk player Xian Youwen, Kim Bong, Portugal first brother Fretas, Denmark first brother Gross, African top player Arul, Swedish third brother m. Michel, and so on.
This list is easy to determine, because basically all the masters from around the world are here. Just scroll down according to the world ranking table. The more eye-catching absent players at the front of this list are Sun Tianlong, Xiao Fei and Mizutori Hato, the first two voluntarily gave up participating, and the latter one was because he refused the recruitment of Sakura Country Table Tennis Association last time. Now he dare not take the initiative to contact Sakura Country Table Tennis Association for fear of being slapped in the face, so he did not come.
After confirming the 64 main draw players, there are still a total of 246 registered players. They come from more than 100 associations. Some associations may have never been heard of by fans. These people rarely participate in the open competition because self-funding is very expensive and they cannot get bonuses. But this time it is World Table Tennis Championships, which is organized by the association and has public subsidies, so they all came.
This is a bit like the kind of martial arts competition described in martial arts novels. It is a top event in the circle. Regardless of whether you have the strength or not, it is always right to go there first and become familiar with it. Later, when you talk to others, you have also participated in it personally. If this competition happens to be famous, then you have also seen it live, and you will be more confident in bragging.
For example, in a country like Nigeria, table tennis talents are scarce, but because of African top player Arul, who is ranked in the top 100 in the world, not only can they participate, but they also have four quotas.
In a small place like Luxembourg, although the men's team only has three places, the women's team also has four places because of Ni Liliyan's grandmother.
In short, the situation is very complicated, both famous and unknown are involved.
As for the associations that everyone is familiar with, all five places are full, such as Sakura Country. The only one we are more familiar with is Zhang Benkuang. Later, we met someone named Niuwa Xiaoxi because of mixed doubles, but this time there are actually three people. Although they are unknown internationally, in In the competition within Sakura Country, the fame is not much less than that of Zhang Benkuang. One is named Utada Seiya, one is named Hoshikawa Mizuki, one is named Komatsu Kouta, and Sakura Country. Except for Zhang Benkuang, the other four have to compete in the qualifying rounds.
In short, 64 of these 246 qualifying players will eventually be selected to form a total of 128 people on the main competition roster with the previously determined 64 people.
So how to choose these 64 people?
Based on the actual number of applicants, the relevant personnel of International Table Tennis Federation will give the most scientific group elimination method after calculation.
The final schedule is as follows: First, these people are divided into 80 groups from front to back according to the world rankings, including 74 groups of 3 people and 6 groups of 4 people. These groups each play a single round-robin within the group, and the group leader of each group is selected.
Then, the first place in the first 48 groups will directly advance to the main match.
The first places in the last 32 groups were drawn again and fought against each other. The winning 16 people advanced to the main match.
At this point, all 64 players from the qualifying rounds who have advanced to the main draw have been announced.
After obtaining the complete list of 128 people for the main competition, the organizer will conduct a second draw, and this time, all competitions will be arranged in order.
This process is also very complicated, probably like this:
First, determine the upper and lower half zones.
Then each half area is divided into two, thus forming four 1/4 areas.
The four 1/4 zones are further divided into two, forming eight 1/8 zones.
The eight 1/8 districts continue to be divided into two, forming sixteen 1/16 districts.
These sixteen 1/16 districts have eight players allocated to each district.
In the first three rounds of the main competition, eight players from each 1/16 district competed by lot. All were knockout rounds with best-of-seven games. 8 went into 4, 4 went into 2, and 2 went into 1. After three rounds, the qualifying players in this 1/16 district were determined, which is equivalent to the top 16.
Next, each qualifying player in the 1/16 zone will have a match with his opponent in the 1/8 half zone, and the winner will advance to the next 1/4 half zone.
And so on, until the qualifying players in the upper and lower half are finally determined. These are the two sides in the final.
Who enters which area is determined by rules and drawing lots at the same time.
The No. 1 seed is at the top of the entire top half.
The No. 2 seed is at the bottom of the entire lower half.
The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds are drawn to determine who is at the bottom of the top half and who is at the top of the bottom half.
Seeds 5 through 8 are drawn to determine who is at the top of the quarter and who is at the bottom of the quarter.
Seeds 9 to 16 are drawn to determine who is at the bottom of Section 1/8 and who is at the top of Section 1/8.
Seeds 17 to 32 are drawn to determine who is at the top of District 1/16 and who is at the bottom of District 1/16.
At this point, the positions of the top 32 players have been distributed as perfectly and equally as possible to all positions in the 16 districts, while the remaining players are completely freely allocated through drawing lots.
Such rules allow the strongest players to meet as late as possible, and also prevent the finals from turning into a battle of disparity between strong and weak.
The qualifying round started on September 28. Due to the large number of people, the qualifying round only lasted for three full days. In the end, 64 players were announced, and there were basically no surprises.
Well, there are actually many surprises. For example, a certain novice player Luxembourg lost to a certain novice player the Peacock Country who was more than 100 places lower than him in the world rankings, and a certain novice player Portugal defeated him who was ranked more than 100 places in the world. Sakura Country player Komatsu Kouta, who is ranked more than 70 places higher, and a brother from an unknown small country performed abnormally due to diarrhea, and lost to an underage player from an unknown African country. In fact, this underage player came to see the world.
It can only be said that although there are many surprises, in the eyes of the experts, they are all just novices pecking each other.
Does an elephant care who is stronger between two fighting ants?
Won't.
Would the elephant consider it an upset because the skinny ant defeated the strong ant?
Nor will it.
So the qualifying rounds were chaotic, but basically no one paid attention, because everyone knew that the 64 main draw players who came out of the qualifying rounds were completely cannon fodder, just to fill the scene.
It wasn't until the second round of drawing and grouping ceremony started that everyone became a little more serious, because everyone was staring at the names at the top of the world rankings, wanting to see who would meet whom in advance.
At this time, Luo Jiu had just won the Portugal Open championship, and his total points had surpassed Hook who was ranked ahead of him, reaching the second position in the world, so he was the No. 1 seed, numbered 1. As the second seed, Hook is numbered 128. They will definitely not meet before the finals.
The next No. 3 and No. 4 seeds are Bai Feng and Lin Li. They need to draw lots to decide who is in the top half and who is in the bottom half.
Luo Jiu and Hook don't care much about this, and the majority of fans don't care much either, because they don't think these two main Chinese table tennis players have the ability to win the championship in this era.
But everyone is very concerned about the first round of draws.
Because the four people in this round are Bayer, Lin Zijun, Wang Chao and k. Michel.
Luo Jiu himself is in the upper half. He regards Wang Chao as his lifelong enemy. He doesn't want to see Wang Chao before the finals. He hopes that Wang Chao will go to the lower half.
Hook didn't feel the same way as Luo Jiu, but if he had to choose two of these four people to meet first, he would naturally hope to meet Bayer and Michel.
However, in the end, Luo Jiu's obsession was stronger, which impressed the god of luck, and Wang Chao was assigned to the lower half.
The biggest suspense of the lottery ceremony ended abruptly.
As for Pike, Weng Chunting, Morad, Fan Xiaodong and others, are they strong? It's obviously very strong. But can it win the championship? Obviously most fans think it's impossible.
World Table Tennis Championships is a grand event filled with strong players. The strong lose and the stronger win. Even Bai Feng and Lin Li, the main players of Chinese table tennis who have been brilliant for seven years, are not looked down upon by everyone. How can they watch Fan Xiaodong, who is younger and has a poor record in the civil war?
So after the more than two-hour group drawing ceremony, all players got a day and a half to rest.
But Wang Chao's rest time is only half a day this afternoon.
Because starting from tomorrow morning, the mixed doubles match will be held before Men's Singles. His opponents and Tang Yuanyuan are a pair of fishy pairs from the host country of Hungary.
In fact, there are a total of 112 mixed doubles registration combinations for World Table Tennis Championships this time, but the rules are much simpler than Men's Singles. There is no qualifying match and direct drawing. There is also a set of rules similar to Men's Singles to ensure that strong combinations will not run into each other at the beginning.
Therefore, Wang Chao did not seize the time to practice. Instead, he locked himself in the room, quietly watched the video, and quietly analyzed all his next opponents.
During this period, He Jingping went to Wang Chao's room three times. Every time he entered, he saw Luo Jiu's game video on the screen in front of Wang Chao.
He also went to Luo Jiu's room twice. Every time he entered, he saw Wang Chao's game video.
So He Jingping, who originally wanted to say something, fell completely silent.
He had deep feelings for both disciples, but the two feelings were actually completely different.
He owed more to Luo Jiu, because Luo Jiu wasted seven years following him, and after Luo Jiu finally succeeded in changing glue, he poured most of his efforts into his little disciple Wang Chao.
So Luo Jiu has almost been flying alone this year.
And he is even more grateful to Wang Chao, because it was Wang Chao who saved his career that was on the verge of despair, and helped him save Luo Jiu and Zhu Ding., it can be said that without Wang Chao, his life would have been bleak so far, and his guilt towards Luo Jiu and apology towards Zhu Ding would never be repaid in this life.
The palms and backs of his hands were all flesh, and he really didn't know who he should hope to win.
From a secular perspective, Luo Jiu is already 27 years old, and Fan Xiaoxian has been waiting for him for seven years. He cannot afford to lose, and he should win this gold medal. In this case, even if he cannot defeat Sun Tianlong in the end and cannot win the Olympic gold medal, he can at least use this World Table Tennis Championships gold medal to propose marriage to Lao Fan's family.
But, should Wang Chao lose?
Just because he is young, has a future, and can wait, should he lose?
There is no such truth.
Even in terms of causality, Wang Chao saved Luo Jiu, so Luo Jiu should give up the gold medal as a reward for Wang Chao.
Wang Chao joked with him many days ago, saying that this was "brothers fighting against each other, a tragedy in the world", but he only thought it was a joke.
But when the two disciples really valued each other so much and met head-on, He Jingping discovered that he was indeed a Pisces who had difficulty choosing...
(I'm in a really bad state today. It's only one chapter. Let me slow down. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I'd better ask for a ticket. There are so few tickets this month.)
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