Last September, the strong rival of the Chinese table tennis team, 38-year-old world champion of the Chinese Taipei team, Zhuang Zhiyuan , angrily announced his withdrawal from the Asian Championships due to conflicts with the coach. At the same time, he no longer cooperated with the association and "flyed solo". He also said that he would give up the competition for the Tokyo Olympics. This statement immediately caused a big wave in the table tennis world, and issues related to athletes' rights and interests have also received more and more attention.
However, after 2020 comes, the situation has changed again. According to the latest news not long ago, Zhuang Zhiyuan has decided to return to the Olympic preparation team, which also means that China's Taipei team may send a very impactful lineup this year, including Lin Yunru, , Zhuang Zhiyuan, and Chen Jianan , which have repeatedly broken through the national table tennis defense line.
Zhuang Zhiyuan was born in 1981. He is the same age as Boer, the European table tennis world "evergreen tree", and is 2 years older than Fan Zhendong's coach Wang Hao . He is a group of players, and he is a very fast player in the table tennis world at the beginning of this century. He was in a very fast rise at that time. He won the singles championship in the Table Tennis Federation finals and shaved Ma Lin's bald head 11-0 in the Open.
But since 2003, Zhuang Zhiyuan's condition has declined and his performance has plummeted. Since then, he has no longer been the most guarded opponent of the national table tennis team for many years.
Interestingly, Zhuang Zhiyuan's career was relatively average in his playing years, but he was very outstanding after his debut and entering the ranks of veterans. He won the fourth place in the men's singles at the London Olympics at the age of 31, and won the men's doubles championship of the Paris World Table Tennis Championships with Chen Jianan at the age of 32. He was considered the number one ace in the team before the rise of the post-00s young player Lin Yunru.
However, as mentioned earlier, in 2019, Zhuang Zhiyuan and head coach Jiang Penglong (also a world-renowned player who eliminated Liu Guoliang in the World Table Tennis Championships and won the third place in the singles) broke out in fierce conflicts, and then announced that they would no longer participate in the Olympic competition. However, after the efforts of others from the association to retain it, it seems that this decision has been invalidated and Zhuang Zhiyuan has returned to the collective embrace.
Currently, the three main players of the Chinese Taipei men's team - Lin Yunru, Zhuang Zhiyuan and Chen Jianan have all achieved the record of defeating the main players of the national table tennis team. Although Zhuang Zhiyuan's singles competitiveness is not strong in terms of technical strength, he can still play doubles, and playing a singles in a team competition is not particularly physically consuming, so he may have a chance to make a comeback in the men's team competition, so he must be on guard.
With the rise of Lin Yunju, the strength of the Chinese Taipei men's team has been greatly improved. Both men's singles and men's teams have hope of winning medals. The cooperation between Lin Yunju and Zheng Yijing and is also very good. I wonder if this young player can make a new breakthrough with seniors such as Zhuang Zhiyuan? Let's wait and see!
