Wang Chuqin‘s racket was accidentally stepped on after the mixed doubles final at the 2024 Olympics. He was forced to play with a spare racket at 4 p.m. today, so how much will it really affect him?
Chinese table tennis team to participate in the history of the World Championships, athletes racket problems is not the first time. In the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Chinese table tennis team even suffered three racket problems, the most famous is Zhang Yining “with the sole of the shoe to win Feng Tianwei”. There are too many rumors in the community, in order to myth Zhang Yining’s image of “the king of magic” is more and more outrageous, here to restore the incident, the following comes from the game records, the head coach and the players in the interview, as close to the truth as possible.
The 08 Beijing Olympics, table tennis is the most stable and most can not go wrong to win the gold project, but always big-hearted Zhang Yining or in the most unexpected link went wrong. quarter-final, Zhang Yining against the sixth seed Singapore’s Feng Tianwei. The 1/8 final at about 10:40 a.m., Zhang Yining easily beat Fukuhara Ai to advance to the 1/4 final at 18:00 p.m. The rules at the time allowed the use of organic glue, here is a brief introduction to the organic glue, its role in addition to glue the rubber in the board, more importantly, can make the rubber sponge expansion, enhance the elasticity of the sponge, thus increasing the player hit the ball speed and rotation. The effectiveness of organic glue is very short, paste a few hours after the sponge “buff” will be significantly attenuated, so athletes are a few hours before the game to glue the racket again, to ensure that the performance of the racket.
This day, Zhang Yining as usual to their own motherboard sticky rubber, coach Li Ying asked her, you brought a few pieces of racket, old Zhang (so called her mainly to highlight a sense of relaxation) honestly answered, a piece. Only under the strong request of Li Falcon, Zhang Yining gave the spare board also glued the rubber. Afterwards, we realized that these two pieces of rubber is Zhang Yining into the Olympic Village on the first day of play after tearing down, after 8 days she even training did not use these two pieces of rubber.
To the pre-game routine equipment testing session, Zhang Yining was told that the motherboard backhand rubber is not flat. At this time the old Zhang is still very calm, take the rolling stick and rolled two rounds and submitted up. Can not let go of the heart of the Li Falcon to find an interpreter to ask, did not expect the interpreter did not understand, thought the Li Falcon asked if there is no problem with the draw, hurriedly replied that there is no problem, Li Falcon assured to go out for a smoke. A cigarette back, something happened: Zhang Yining motherboard test failed.
At this time Zhang Yining has not realized the seriousness of the situation, the old Zhang calmly into the field, calmly began to warm up – played a few balls, the old Zhang looked down at the ball beat, and turned back to the coach’s chair puzzled: are you kidding? how is this spare racket?
There is a say a, Zhang Yining walked onto the court only to find that there are problems with the racket is indeed outrageous, but logical: according to the rules, the player’s racket in the acceptance of the test will be the organizing committee will be put away, and then the referee handed over to the athlete, at that time the old Zhang may not have thought to send is the vice board, looked at it and then took over the racket to start practicing. As for whether Zhang Yining knew beforehand, she herself has given two versions of the answer: the day after the match she had an interview with New People’s Evening News, saying that she learned of the news half an hour before the match. But when reviewing the matter in 2020, she added that she did know about it only after she had been on the court practicing for a minute or two.
Compared to the pre-match drama, the match was no less intense. The scoring looked like a 4-1 win for Zhang Yining to advance, but the five-set scores were 13-11, 12-14, 14-12, 12-10, and 13-11, with all two-point spreads, and each set was played to a blowout. After breaking into the quarterfinals, Zhang Yining also succeeded in avoiding her title of “big devil” to become a “big joke”, the Chinese women’s ping ping pong finally succeeded in sweeping the top three, so that we can see the podium in front of the three five-starred red flag raised in a magnificent picture.
In addition to Zhang Yining, the other two racquet accidents in that home Olympics let Ma Lin catch up.
Men’s team semifinals, Ma Lin first set against South Korea’s Oh Sang Eun. The first game 8-3, Ma Lin backhand grab pull, but the ball is shorter than the prediction of the landing point, racket knocked to the table. Ma Lin was a cold heart, forced to control themselves not to look at the racket just to every 6 points of the sweat session, Ma Lin took the opportunity to take a glance: backhand rubber knocked out a 3-4 centimeters of the mouth, according to the rules of the Ma Lin need to replace the racket (rubber is obviously damaged, the player needs to replace the spare plate), but Wu Shangyin and the referee did not pay attention to the Marlins also do not say anything, continue to calmly play, but also “Ma Lin continued to play calmly without saying anything, and even lowered his racket when he was preparing to receive the ball, so that Wu Shangyin could not see the reverse side of his racket.
When it came to the men’s singles semifinals, Ma Lin became the beneficiary. On the first ball of the opening set, Wang Liqin’s racket hit the table when he was pulling a backhand, and the rubber was torn. Again, Wang Liqin did not take the initiative to replace the paddle, but the attentive Ma Lin noticed this and pointed it out to the umpire.
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Ma Lin took a closer look and realized that it was not a simple matter.
After the umpire’s inspection, Wang Liqin could only change his spare racket to continue the match. Wang Liqin was obviously affected by the change of racket, losing 5-11 in the first set, and then also made a lot of mistakes, and the third set was reversed when he was leading 9-5, and despite two consecutive sets after that, he finally lost 2-4. Ma Lin’s practice can not be faulted, Wang Liqin after the game also sincerely responded to their own usually also take the spare racket practice, this loss is not the reason for the racket.
Back to Wang Chuqin, now equipment rules reform, organic glue is banned, players do not have to two or three hours before the game and then re-glued racket, but the main board damage to the player’s psychology will inevitably cause some impact. After repeated encounters with racket problems, the Chinese table tennis team also pay great attention to the preparation of spare vice boards, Chinese table tennis team captain Ma Long in the preparation for the Paris Olympics, will also be in the training of alternating between the main board and the vice board for the game, is to avoid a very small probability of accidental situations.
CCTV reporter Li Wujun said, Chinese table tennis team athletes will prepare 2-3 pieces of vice boards, usually the difference is not big, but to a specific period of time, characteristics of the scene, the difference between the main board and the spare board is huge. Wang Chuqin just won the mixed doubles championship with the main board, and the psychological dependence is definitely great. This is also why he was excited after the game to the competent coach Xiao war said “to report”, for Wang Chuqin, the most important thing is still over the psychological barrier. For amateur players, changing the same type of board may not have much effect on the feel of the hand, but for high-level athletes, the weight difference of a few grams (table tennis boards generally weigh about 90g, plus about 200g of rubber), or even an extra layer of glue will feel a significant difference, and players need to adjust their own power movements and habits according to the paddle. The only good news is that at least Wang Chuqin didn’t know he was going to change his board for the match until before the match, and all he could do was to get used to the spare board as soon as possible in training and the first few rounds of the tournament to avoid the impact of the board change to the maximum extent possible.
