Asian Games Preview: Cautious China Preparing for South Korea

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Asian Games Preview: Cautious China Preparing for South Korea

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With only a dozen days to go before the 14th Asian Games raises its curtain, the all-conquering Chinese national table tennis team have appeared cautious and refrained from being too optimistic about its gold prospects in Busan.

While many were astonished at China head coach Cai Zhenhua's modesty as he claimed earlier last month that he foresees only four to five golds for his team, team insiders said that Cai's prediction was based on meticulous analysis.

Although China had completed a clean sweep of golds in the lasttwo Olympics and the 2001 Osaka World Championships, the battle in Busan will be no easy job for the all-star Chinese squad, consisting of world number one and number two for both men and women and also five others ranked in the world top 10, said Liu Fengyan, director of the table tennis and badminton center under China's State Sports General Administration.

"Actually, in the table tennis events, Asian players are almost the world's," Liu explained at a press conference here on Tuesday, citing South Korea, DPR Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Singapore as China's main contenders.

The official underlined the threat from China's long-time arch rival, the South Koreans, who he said would definitely use their host advantages to launch fierce assaults on the Chinese players in all events.

He predicted that the two golds for men's singles and women's doubles would be the hardest to win, as the Chinese would face powerful challenges from the South Korean side on both events.

The Chinese team's final lineup for the individual events was also announced at the press conference, and the two players chosen for the most concerned men's singles competition were world number one and reigning world champion Wang Liqin and Kong Linghui, a grand slam winner of world, Olympic World Cup titles now ranked sixth in the world.

According to inside sources, a key criterion, if not the only one, for the player selection was that they must keep a comparatively good record against South Korea's veteran player Kim Taek Soo, the defending singles champion who is now world number 10.

In the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in 1998, Kim, a highly aggressive player known best for his devastating forehand and persistent rallies, edged out China's world champion Kong Linghui and Olympic champion Liu Guoliang to deny China another title sweep.

However, some said that neither Wang nor Kong could handle Kim for sure. Wang, indisputably the world's strongest when he is in good shape, has repeatedly given unstable performance in major international competitions due to a fragile mentality, while Kong, an all-around player with rich experience, has seldom won an easy match against the tenacious Kim.

Although Kong scored a straight 3-0 victory against Kim at a team friendly between China and a joint squad of world stars last month, Chinese coaches insisted that Kim must have concealed his real strength in that match with a view to the forthcoming Busan games.

"It was not the real Kim. He appeared inactive on court, moved too slowly and also made poor follow-ups after serves," commented Yin Xiao, head coach of the Chinese men's team. "He might be out of form, but I wonder if he had deliberately reserved something."

For the Chinese women's side, its supremacy in the team, singles and mixed doubles events would remain unshakable in Busan,as its Asian Games squad is simply extravagant with the induction of world number one and dual Olympic and world champion Wang Nan, world number two and newly-crowned World Cup holder Zhang Yining and World Cup runner-up Li Nan.

However, the exit of veterans Li Ju and Yang Ying from the national team earlier this year had cost China two of its best pairs for women's doubles. For some period, Niu Jianfeng, a rising star with a good singles record, was assigned as Wang Nan's new partner, but the pair failed to achieve any excellent results in a series of major international competitions due to coordination problems.

Meanwhile, South Korea has seen a golden opportunity in Busan to achieve a long-coveted breakthrough in women's doubles, as it in recent years has always focused on the training for this event, Chinese officials noted.

In a last-ditch attempt to improve China's competitiveness in women's doubles, Wang Nan has now paired up with Guo Yan, a 19-year-old Beijing player who, along with her teammate Bai Yang, just seized the women's doubles title at the Korea Open early this month.

Team sources said that the new duo's pre-Busan training was "progressing smoothly and effectively".

At the press conference, Liu also pointed out that the adoption of the new serves rules, which aim at making the serves less treacherous and deceptive and bringing in longer and more dramatic rallies, could cause some more trouble to the Chinese, many of whom often prefer fast attacking to lengthy exchange of shots.

"From daily training we can see that many Chinese players still have some problem to get adapted to the new rules," said Liu.

The new serves rules, another major reform step taken by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) in a bid to attract more television viewers and sponsorships, were first applied in the recent Women's World Cup in Singapore.

Nevertheless, some optimists still believe China could gain more in Busan and even create history by accomplishing its first Asian Games table tennis title sweep.

They argued that head coach Cai had always kept a low profile prior to any major competitions in order not to give too much pressure to his team. Cai's prediction for the last Asian Games was also 4 to 5 golds only, they said, but the final result was that China had come to just one step away from bagging all golds.

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