Wang Hao celebrates as he wins the men's singles.

China’s table tennis team continued its winning fashion in the 2009 World Championships in Yokohama. The team, which claimed all the four golds in the Beijing Games, dampened competitors’ title expectations by securing all the semi-final seats in the tournament.

Li Ping and Cao Zhen defeated Mu Zi and Zhang Jike to win the mixed doubles title on Sunday, while Wang Hao and Chen Qi, the no.1 seeds, edged out compatriots Ma Long and Xu Xin to win the men’s doubles. Guo Yue and Li Xiaoxia won the country’s 11th successive victory in the women’s doubles.

Zhang Yining, China’s new table tennis queen after Deng Yaping and Wang Nan, defeated Guo Yue to win gold  in the women’s singles this afternoon. And Wang Hao, the world number one  in ITTF ranking, swept Wang Liqin 4-0 in the men’s singles final.

That China won all the golds and silvers in the tournament doesn’t seem so exciting to the country’s sports officials.

“If one team keeps winning all at the world championships and Olympics, table tennis’ Olympic future is in danger,” said Yao Zhenxu, a vice chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association in an interview. “In recent world championships or Olympics, semifinals are always more exciting than finals because they are all Chinese affairs.”

The ITTF said last week that they want to alter the schedule for the 2012 London Olympics. The new proposal, which opposed by China, will see singles matches played ahead of the team events as “it’s fairer to the players who do not take part in the team event.”

Source:

• Sky Sports: Golds for China  - 11th successive women’s double title for Chinese
• Xinhua: As China won all, Chinese official worried about table tennis’ Olympic future

Photo:  ITTF

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Chinese Badminton Association once formed a league back in 1999, which went down in 2003 due to a failure of generating profits. Aside from international matches organized by Badminton World Federation, local players in China nationwide now can only play in two tournaments organized annually by the association: National Champions Tournament (全国冠军赛) and National Tournament (全国锦标赛), which is, no doubt, far from good for the development of young talents.

Li Yongbo, the head coach of Chinese National Badminton Team, told press recently that the association had decided to kick off a new badminton league next year even before the Olympics. “We’ll try to replace the tournaments by a league in 2009, and to make it bigger should we achieve our goal in 2010.”

Can Li and his fellow colleagues reach their goal? It’s reported that the association is looking for a sponsorship of about RMB 5-6 million to start. But if they are to follow the route of Chinese Table Tennis League, where clubs’ revenues are mainly generated by touring the country and getting bonuses from generous local private business owners, we’ll be curious to see how long they can make it under the current economic conditions.

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