In the 2024 week 10 world rankings released by the International Table Tennis Federation on March 5, Wang Manyu surpassed Wang Yidi with 4,072 points with 4,137 points and became the first Chinese women's table tennis player. However, this result did not make Wang Manyu happy, but made her unwilling, because she suffered unfair treatment at the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan.
The Busan World Table Tennis Championships is a team qualification tournament for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, and it is a very important competition for national table tennis. Wang Manyu performed well in the group stage, she saved the crisis of national table tennis in the first round against the Indian team, she single-handedly won two points when Sun Yingsha and Wang Yidi both lost, and stabilized the situation for the national table tennis in the first game. Wang Manyu's stability and resistance to pressure have made people see her strength and potential.
However, just when Wang Manyu thought that she could continue to play for the national table tennis, she unexpectedly missed the knockout round. The reason is that the national table tennis stipulates that only the top three players from various countries can have priority in participating in the knockout round, and Wang Manyu was ranked fourth in the world at that time, so she could only be excluded.
In her place was Wang Yidi, who was the world No. 2 but was in poor form, losing to an unknown player from India in the group stage, which greatly undermined people's confidence in her. Wang Manyu could only reluctantly accept this decision, she could only cheer for her teammates on the sidelines.
Wang Yidi's status in national table tennis has always been controversial, she did not achieve good results in the Asian Games and the World Table Tennis Championships, but she was always favored by the coaching staff. Some people speculate that this is because she and Ma Lin are fellow villagers, and they used to be Ma Lin's **, and they have a close relationship with him, so they can get more competition opportunities again and again. This statement is not reasonable, because Ma Lin is not the decision-maker of national table tennis, Liu Guoliang, Li Falcon and others are the real helmsmen, and they have no special relationship with Wang Yidi. Marlene may be biased on the tournament list, but it is not always him who makes the decision.
The reason why Wang Yidi was able to play in important competitions was mainly because the rules of national table tennis gave her an advantage. National table tennis stipulates that the knockout list of the World Table Tennis Championships and the singles list of the Asian Games are arranged in the order of world ranking. This is a vicious circle, because Wang Manyu was affected by injuries in the middle and missed some game points, so Wang Yidi's ranking went up accordingly. Wang Yidi's rise in ranking means that she is eligible to participate in more competitions, while Wang Manyu is missing more opportunities to earn points because of her insufficient ranking.
Wang Manyu is a higher quality than Wang Yidi, and she performed well in the first half of the Olympic cycle, but injuries affected her too much, causing her to miss out on the women's singles qualification for the Asian Games and not participate in the team knockout round of the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan. However, Wang Manyu has now recovered her form, but she still needs to improve her ranking in order to get more opportunities under the rules of national table tennis.
Wang Manyu is always so "unlucky". The Olympic selection period is from May 8, 2023 to May 7, 2024, but she was plagued by injuries in the first half of the cycle. In fact, she won the championship at the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships and the National Games, but these achievements were not included in the scope of inspection by the national table tennis coaching staff.
With few months left until the Paris Olympics, she has only been able to earn enough points at the Singapore Grand Slam and the World Cup, which are clearly too short for her. Many fans feel that this is very unfavorable to Wang Manyu, and if she can't grasp these two opportunities, she may miss the Paris Olympics.
Wang Manyu's luck seems to have been unlucky, and in the run-up to the Paris Olympics, she didn't have enough points due to a previous injury, leaving her at a loss for the rules of the Olympic selections. The Olympic selection rules ignore her previous stellar record. Recently, she has also performed well at the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan, and her recently updated world ranking has surpassed Wang Yidi, but how much will this help her Olympic journey? There are rules for subtracting expired points from world ranking points, but there are no Olympic selection points, so the pressure on Wang Manyu is very great now. She will only have to work hard for a higher place in the next tournament to reverse her points disadvantage.
I hope that Wang Manyu can calm down, not be disturbed by too much pressure, and give full play to his usual strength. It's man-made, come on!