After the recent Asia-Europe table tennis match, ZhangJike, a 30-year-old Grand Slam player, revealed that he had retired from the Korean Open in July. ZhangJike said that withdrawing from the Korean Open had nothing to do with waist injury, but ITTF's unfair lottery arrangement. Matt Pound, media director of ITTF Asia-Pacific Headquarters, updated the Chinese Weibo this morning to respond to ZhangJike's question. He said politely that he was surprised that ZhangJike was still talking about it after so long.
In the men's singles preliminaries of the Korean Open in July 18 this year, before the match between ZhangJike and teammate An Yan, the host announced that ZhangJike had retired due to a waist injury. At that time, ZhangJike had already defeated South Korean Kim Byung-hyun 4-/KLOC-0 and Indian Desai hammett 4-2 in the qualifying group stage. According to ITTF's new rules, you don't need to draw lots again to enter the knockout stage of the group stage, but you will automatically enter the corresponding position according to the publicity of the corresponding group stage and formation.
However, at that time, the organizers of the Korean Open suddenly decided to draw lots. The first draw showed that ZhangJike's opponent in the preliminary round was teammate Liang Jingkun. After the first lottery, the result caused many players' dissatisfaction, and the organizer had to organize the lottery again. As a result of the second draw, ZhangJike will play against the foreign players in the preliminaries. However, not long after, the tournament officials overturned the lottery results just now and re-announced the new men's singles preliminary elimination list. This time, ZhangJike's opponent became teammate An Yan.
ZhangJike said recently: "It's not because of my waist injury, but because my opponent has been replaced three times in a row. If the time is adjusted, it is often needed for live TV broadcast, and everyone can understand it. The opponent changed three times, which really made him unacceptable. This is the case with athletes. You can't change it after winning the lottery. If you can change at will, you can propose to change your opponent. " He also said: "This is my personal experience as an athlete. Maybe if I don't say it, no one will. I am not afraid of their opinions, which is unfair to athletes. "
Matt Pound said: "We paid close attention to the news about the lottery at the Korea Open last week. Unexpectedly, it took us a long time to get relevant opinions after the game. Here, we want to clarify that although there are some technical problems, like all other ITTF events, the Korean Open is open and transparent and conforms to the rules and regulations. Mr. ZhangJike thinks ITTF needs to be more professional, which is our plan after the return of commercial rights in 202 1 ITTF. At that time, we will launch a new professional tour to better promote table tennis on a global scale. "
Source: Sohu News