SEOUL, It has been several years in the making, but the southeastern port city of Busan will finally host the world championships in table tennis starting this week.
Busan, 320 kilometers from Seoul, will hold the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Team Table Tennis Championships from Friday to Feb. 25. It will be the first ping pong worlds to take place in South Korea. The Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (BEXCO) will host all matches.
In even-numbered years, the world championships feature men’s and women’s team events, while the event in odd-numbered years is made up of individual events — singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
Busan was first selected as the host of the 2020 championships in 2018. The event was set for March 2020, but it was pushed back to June 2020 and again to September 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ITTF postponed it again to February 2021 but in December 2020, the ITTF canceled the competition.
Busan launched another bid for the 2024 competition and bea
t Buenos Aires in a vote held in November 2021.
The men’s and women’s tournaments will each feature 40 nations. They have been divided into eight groups of five.
After round robin action, the eight group winners will advance to the round of 16, and the remaining eight spots will be filled by the winners of the round of 32 matches between the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds from the groups.
Teams will each feature five players, but only three of them will be eligible to play in each match.
A team match will feature up to five singles matches in a best-of-five format.
China, which has reigned supreme in international table tennis for decades, will once again be favored to sweep both the men’s and women’s titles.
China has won every men’s world team title since 2001 — 10 in a row. On the women’s side, China has been crowned the champion at 13 out of the past 14 competitions, the lone exception being the 2010 event where Singapore came out on top.
The Chinese men’s team boasts the world’s top five singles players:
Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan.
The five players for the Chinese women’s team are ranked first through fourth and then sixth in the world rankings: Sun Yingsha, Wang Yidi, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu and Chen Xingtong.
Japan, led by world No. 5 Hina Hayata, will try to end China’s streak.
The host South Korea will feature world No. 8 Shin Yu-bin and No. 21 Jeon Ji-hee. The two combined to win the women’s doubles gold medal at last year’s Asian Games in China, but will have to be on their own in Busan as they seek to grab South Korea’s first world team medal since the bronze in 2012.
In 2018 in Sweden, South Korea and North Korea hastily formed a joint women’s team before facing each other in the quarterfinals, and advanced to the semifinals as one team before taking the bronze medal.
At the pretournament press conference Thursday, Shin said the goal is to grab a ticket to the Paris Olympics by reaching at least the quarterfinals.
“Since this is the team competition, I can’t
do things on my own. Everyone will have to pull in the same direction to do well,” Shin said. “If we can all come together as a team, we should have good results here.”
Currently fifth in the ITTF women’s team rankings, South Korea should have little trouble making it to the final eight. Head coach Oh Kwang-heon said he wants to see the national flag on the rafters during the medal ceremony.
A showdown against Japan, No. 2 in the team rankings, could also materialize. A South Korea-Japan showdown in any sport is sure to generate interest in both countries, given the two countries’ long-standing sporting rivalry.
“No matter who we face, I will focus on my strengths and do the best I can,” Shin said. “It’s important to play good matches.”
In Busan, Lee Zion (No. 44), Lee Eun-hye (No. 65) and Yoon Hyo-bin (No. 159) will join the Shin-Jeon duo. South Korea is in Group 5 against Puerto Rico, Italy, Malaysia and Cuba.
The South Korean men have been more successful than women in recent years, having grabbed a m
edal at nine of the past 10 competitions.
This year’s team is made up of Jang Woo-jin (No. 14), Lim Jong-hoon (No. 18), Lee Sang-su (No. 27), An Jae-hyun (No. 34) and Park Gyu-hyeon (No. 178).
Any path to the podium will have to go through China, and it’s considered virtually impossible to beat China at a high-level competition. At last year’s Asian Games, Jang and Lim lost to Fan and Wang 4-0 (11-6, 11-8, 11-7, 11-3) in the men’s doubles finals.
At previous world team championships, Jang has been a member of three bronze medal-winning teams in 2016, 2018 and 2022. Lee played with Jang in 2016 and 2018, while Lim did so in 2018. An was Jang’s teammate in 2022, when neither Lee nor Lim made the squad.
South Korea will take on India, Poland, Chile and New Zealand in Group 3.
Source: Yonhap News Agency