Asian Games Preview: Cautious China Preparing for South Korea Menace

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 23, 2002

Asian Games Preview: Cautious China Preparing for South Korea Menace

The all-conquering Chinese table tennis team appears cautious and refrained from being too optimistic about its gold prospects in the Busan Asian Games.

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The all-conquering Chinese table tennis team appears cautious and refrained from being too optimistic about its gold prospects in the Busan Asian Games.

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

Although China had clean-swept gold medals in the last two 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 best," Liu said, citing South Korea, DPR Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Singapore as China's main challengers.

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

He predicted that the men's singles and women's doubles would be the hardest to win, as the Chinese would face strong challengesfrom South Koreans.

World top-ranked Wang Liqin and No. 6 Kong Linghui, who has completed a "grand slam" of world, Olympic and World Cup titles, will play in men's singles.

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 Kim Taek-soo, the defending singles champion and currently world No. 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 a 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.World No. 1 and dual Olympic and world champion Wang Nan, No. 2 and World Cup holder Zhang Yining and World Cup runner-up Li Nan will prove too much for the rest of Asia.

However, the retirement of veterans Li Ju and Yang Ying earlierthis year had cost China two of its best doubles players. 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 thismonth.

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

Liu Fengyan 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 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 stillhave 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 four o five golds only, they said, but the final result was one gold short of a clean sweep.

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