In this post, I will talk about a very interesting topic: 'How is China so good at table tennis?' With multiple grand slam winners like Ma Long, Zhang Jike and Liu Guoliang, China has been a powerhouse in table tennis since around the 1980's and truly became the dominant force of the sport in the 2000's. In that period of time, from the late 2000's to this day, China has been at the top of table tennis with their players shattering record after record.
^ 2 of the 5 Table Tennis Grand Slam Winners Liu Guoliang and Ma Long
(https://twitter.com/xhsports/status/1119390860448342016)
The Statistics
China has very obviously been a dominating force in the table tennis scene but here are some statistics that I found very interesting:
- China have won every Men Singles World Championship gold since 2005 and have won every gold since 1995 for the Women Singles World Championship
- China have won 32/37 of the available Olympic Golds available, this is significant because an Olympic Gold is possibly the biggest achievement a player can win (excluding a Grand Slam)
- In the latest 2020 Tokyo Olympics, they never dropped a single team game in both the Men and Women's team event
The Main Reason
Some might find this fairly obvious but every country's success in a sport all stem from the infrastructure that has been laid down. China have one of the best infrastructures in the world with many world class training facilities, ridiculous amounts of grassroot players and a lot of funding from the government. This infrastructure unlocks many many perks like the squad depth, size of the squad and profits generated.
^ Olympic Champion Li Xiaoxia playing table tennis with a school boy
China's infrastructure start from countless amount of children starting training at a young age, 4 to 5, and hoping to make the cut into the district team at the age of 9 to 10. As they grow older, countless other kids are also competing for the same spot on the provincial team where they are one step closer to becoming a national star. Once they are in the provincial team, training becomes more intense and the top players move to the national team where they start training with the senior team. The player is now around 15 to 18 years old and have dedicated their whole lives to the game. Everyday is training and hard work in hopes of making the elite first team of the nation in the near future. Finally, at the very end, only the cream of the crop make it into the elite team whilst the rest of the players return to the senior reserve teams. Some players who didn't make it into the senior team leave the country in hopes of reviving their career after spending their whole lives training to become professionals. Some examples include Singapore's Feng Tianwei and Gao Ning and the German chopper Han Ying. Some may argue that China's infrastructure is cruel as the players spend their lives training and end up in the reserve team. This is true but the efficiency of this system cannot be denied.
The Benefits
With an infrastructure like China's, they would have access to many many benefits which all stem from the large squad they have and depth of that squad. They have enough players to host their own tournaments, could 'emulate' their competitors and constantly rotate their roster of elite players.
Firstly, China could easily find a player in their huge team who plays a similar style to their competitors. An example of this is Mima Ito who is the only player among the top 7 women in the world that isn't Chinese. Her short pimples, creative playing styles combined with her tricky hook serves make her a very hard opponent to defeat. Initially, Mima Ito was a threat to the Chinese reign beating Ding Ning, Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha a few times. China's solution, Zhang Rui. Across many closed training camps in China and during the Olympics, Zhang Rui was one of the training partners to help the team prepare. Zhang Rui is similar to Mima Ito as they both use short pimples and have similar playing styles and all the Chinese team needed to do was to emulate Mima Ito as similar as possible. As seen in the Olympics, Sun Yingsha completely breezed past Mima Ito 4:0 in sets during the individual events. When compared to the previous encounters when Mima Ito met Sun Yingsha, Sun Yingsha had more practice this time and knew what to do when Mima Ito hit her with spin produced with her short pimples.
^ Zhang Rui, China's solution for Mima Ito
Secondly, with a squad the size of China's players have plenty of exposure to different players and playing styles when compared to a national team with only around 8 people. This can be seen during the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic when many table tennis players had to train on their own or not at all because of the restrictions. The Olympics approaching made it worse as many players couldn't train and prepare for it. The lack of competitions was also a problem as players would not get enough exposure and test their skills against players on their levels. China solved this problem by hosting their own competitions within their own national team. This is when we saw players like Zhou Qihao come into the spotlight and it was a true sign of the Chinese National Teams squad depth. This competition also made sure the players in the Olympic team were kept in good form and ready for the Olympics.
^ Sun Yingsha playing Liu Fei in China's Olympic simultion competition
Finally and most importantly, the constant rotation of fresh and young players is and has been the key to China's dominance in the long run. This systems ensure that when a player retires, a junior younger player is waiting to take that players place. The rotation has been used for quite a while. Starting with players like Kong Linghui, Liu Guoliang and Ma Lin followed by Wang Hao, Wang Liqin and Zhang Jike and Ma Long, Xu Xin and Fan Zhendong right now. They also have players like Wang Chuqin, Liang Jingkun and Zhou Qihao for the future. Just like the men's team, the women's team also have had good rotations for a while with Deng Yaping, Zhang Yining and Wang Nan followed by Li Xiaoxia, Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen and now with Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and Wang Manyu. With a rotation system like this, friendly competition is provided between senior and junior players and this makes sure that every player is pushed to the best they can play.
The Conclusion
As mentioned multiple times, the infrastructure is the the backbone of China's National Team success and the reason for their dominance. With amazing squad depth, a big squad and plenty of government funding, they get to reap the benefits like having the ability to have their own competitions, rotations of fresh players and even the ability to emulate their competitors. Though countries like Japan, Germany and Sweden have been partially successful in disrupting the Chinese dominance, it doesn't look like China's reign in table tennis is coming to an end anytime soon.
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Sources (Updated):
https://inf.news/en/sport/d50f12717f5bc9a997e7296f02ec7a39.html?
https://www.ittf.com/2017/05/13/imitators-recruited-team-chinas-closed-training/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200417042332/https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/sports/TTN/
http://www.olympic.org/en/content/All-Olympic-results-since-1896/
https://www.flyingsesame.com/debunked-myth-of-china-table-tennis-dominance/
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/review-olympics-table-tennis-china-underlines-dominance-with-near-perfect-medals-2021-08-08/
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/en/sports/table-tennis/
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1110657/tokyo-2020-olympics-table-tennis
https://www.firstpost.com/sports/firstpost-explains-what-makes-china-a-dynasty-in-table-tennis-particularly-at-the-olympics-9803761.html
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