By IANS
Wuhan (China) : Coaches of the all-conquering Chinese national table tennis team will not have the final say on the roster for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a senior Chinese sports official told Xinhua here Thursday.
“I don’t know who will represent China at the 2008 Olympic Games, nor do the coaches of the national team now,” said Cai Zhenhua, the former chief coach of the national team and now a deputy minister of State Sports Administration of China.
Cai made these remarks while watching the ongoing sixth Chinese City Games here featuring nearly all the top under-20 paddlers in the country.
“Words of the national coaches only work as references for the final roster,” said Cai, who led China to the top of world table tennis stage in the last two decades.
“According to the qualification rules, only three men and women each from every participating team could make the Olympic Games. So the competition for a spot in the Chinese squad will be very tough,” he said, adding that the selection will be fair.
“The basic principle of picking China’s Olympic squad is to select the team using a fair and public system. To carry that out, the coaching staff will also take results from some national and international events into consideration.
“Not one or two matches or all the matches, but some of the important tournaments like the world championships and the World Cup will count.
“Since there are too many talented paddlers in China, it’ll be only fair and easy for the national team to choose Olympians through public selection,” he added.
In the latest rankings released by the world table tennis governing body ITTF earlier this month, China keep their dominance by occupying six of top ten men’s and five of top ten women’s places.
Newly crowned World Cup winner Wang Hao leads the men’s standings with former World Cup title holder Ma Lin and three-time world champion Wang Liqin in second and third places respectively.
The “Grand Slam” paddler Zhang Yining is on top of the women’s rankings, followed by teenage sensation Guo Yue, who is playing here at the City Games, and veteran Wang Nan.
The Chinese national team twice had public trials for the world championships in Bremen (2006) and Zagreb (2007). No such trials have been scheduled for the Olympics so far.
Cai, who first became China’s national coach in 1991, is regarded as the most successful coach in table tennis history, leading the country to more than ten Olympic gold medals during his 13-year tenure, before the 46-year-old was named the director of the Table Tennis and Badminton Administrative Centre in late 2004 after the Athens Olympic Games.