Even if the ranking was low, China was China.
The world’s third-ranked team Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin failed to win a single game against China’s Liang Jin-kun and Chen Tian in the mixed doubles semifinals on the fifth day of the 2023 Asian Table Tennis Championships held at Pyeongchang Dome in Gangwon-do on the 7th, with a game score of 0-3 (7-11 9- 11 2-11) and knelt down.
The pair of Liang Jinkun and Chen Tian is ranked 26th in the world in mixed doubles.
As a result, the team of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin received a bronze medal alongside Taiwan’s Lin Yun-ru and Zhen Zhiyou (5th place), who also lost to China’s Lin Gao-yuan and Wang Yidi in the other semi-final match. The Lin Gaoyuan-Wang Yidi pair is ranked 40th. 스포츠토토
The winning group in the mixed doubles competition will receive one of the 16 mixed doubles quotas for the Paris Olympics held in July next year.
In addition to the team of Jong-Hoon Lim and Yu-Bin Shin, Korea attempted to win the championship with the team of Woo-Jin Jang and Ji-Hee Jeon, but none of them made it to the finals.
The pair of Woojin Jang and Jihee Jeon were eliminated in the quarterfinals after losing to the pair of Lin Yunru and Zhen Zhiyou.
However, there are still more opportunities to win a quota for the mixed doubles finals at the Paris Olympics.
It can be obtained at the Olympic regional qualifiers to be held in March-April next year. In the case of mixed doubles, only one quota is allocated to each country at the Olympics.
The mixed doubles final was held between Chinese players. China, which previously won two gold medals in the men’s and women’s team events and reclaimed the top spot it lost two years ago due to its absence from the Doha Games, booked its third gold medal and again confirmed that it is the world’s best table tennis player.
China did not send the No. 1 pair of Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha and the No. 4 pair of Kuai Man and Lin Shidong to the mixed doubles match in this tournament. In fact, second-tier players were put forward, including the Liang Jinkun-Chen Tiani pair and Lin Gaoyuan-Wang Yidi, who were outside the top 20 and did not work together often.
Nevertheless, they defeated both Korean and Taiwanese ace groups in the semifinals. In fact, all Chinese players participating in the mixed doubles at this tournament are ranked 10th in the world in singles, including Liang Jinkun ranked 6th in the world rankings for men’s singles, Lin Gaoyuan ranked 8th, Chen Tianyi ranked 6th in the world rankings for women’s singles, and Wang Yidi ranked 3rd. These are top-class players.
Korea struggled as Lim Jong-hoon was unable to show the sharp performance he showed in the men’s team event. China’s strategy of having Liang Jingkun attack hard and Chen Tianyi, who is light on his feet, defend without water, worked well.
The team of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin is expected to protect the pride of Korean table tennis at next year’s Paris Olympics. However, there is still a long way to go, as they failed to advance to the finals at the Asian Championships after being eliminated in the quarterfinals by losing 0-3 to Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto and Hina Hayata at the individual World Championships held in Durban, South Africa last May. was revealed.
The pair of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin often win other international competitions, such as winning the World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender Rio de Janeiro 2023 International Table Tennis Competition last month, but in the most prestigious competitions in the world and Asia, Japan won the mixed doubles gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, the eternal world of table tennis. They were unable to use their strength against the first-tier China and were defeated.
The team of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin will once again challenge the world’s highest walls through the Hangzhou Asian Games.
Meanwhile, the Korean players, who won one silver medal and two bronze medals in the men’s and women’s team event and mixed doubles, will now continue their medal challenge in the men’s and women’s singles and men’s and women’s doubles.
In the men’s doubles match held earlier this day, the pair of Woo-jin Jang and Jong-hoon Lim, who won the silver medal at the Durban World Championships, and the pair of Jae-hyun Ahn and Kang-hyeon Park, who were doubles, reached the quarterfinals with successive victories.
In women’s doubles, the pair of Shin Yu-bin and Jeon Ji-hee, who won the silver medal at the World Championships, advanced to the quarterfinals.
Men’s doubles and women’s doubles are official events at the Asian Games to be held in Hangzhou, China at the end of this month, but are not official Olympic events. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when table tennis was adopted as an official Olympic event, men’s doubles and women’s doubles were official events, but since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the men’s team event and women’s team event have become official events, along with the existing men’s singles and women’s singles, instead of the two events. Then, mixed doubles became an official event for the first time at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.