SPORTS NEWS UK WITH TRY MY SPORT

World and European Champions Depart

Wang Liqin, the reigning World champion and Timo Boll who won the Men’s Singles title at the Liebherr European Championships earlier in the year, both suffered defeat at the quarter-final stage of the Men’s Singles event at the Liebherr French Open in Toulouse on Saturday 3rd November 2007.

Seeded three, Wang Liqin lost to fifth seed, Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus in seven games whilst in four straight games, fourth seed Timo Boll was beaten by Chinese teenager and sixth seed, Ma Long.

Defeats for the third and fourth seeds in the round of the last eight but there were no such problems for the top two seeds, Ma Long’s compatriots, Ma Lin and Wang Hao. Ma Lin, seeded one, beat colleague Chen Qi whilst Wang Hao, seeded two, defeated Korean qualifier Kim Jung Hoon.

Disappointment for Germany in the Men’s Singles event but they did have cause to celebrate in the counterpart female competition. Wu Jiaduo, now Germany’s leading lady, overcame China’s Guo Yan, the third seed in the third round of the Women’s Singles event. However, the celebrations were short lived. In the next round the German was beaten in straight games by the number six seed, Singapore’s Wang Yue Gu.

Guo Yan was the only one of the top four seeds not to reach the penultimate stage of proceedings. China’s Zhang Yining and Wang Nan, the respective number one and two seeds both came through successfully as did Singapore’s Li Jia Wei, the number four seed. In the quarter-finals, Zhang Yining overcame Japan’s Sayaka Hirano, Wang Nan ended the outstanding run of Romanian teenager Daniela Dodean and Li Jia Wei accounted for the Korean defender, Park Mi Young.

Success for Singapore and China and in the Women’s Doubles there was more success for those two nations. Li Jia Wei and Wang Yue Gu reached the final beating Daniela Dodean and Romanian colleague, Elizabeta Samara in the semis whilst in the counterpart penultimate stage duel, an all-Chinese affair saw the partnership of Guo Yan and Wang Nan overcome Chen Qing and Fan Ying.

However, in the Men’s Doubles it was disappointment for Singapore with Gao Ning and Yang Zi, the top seeds, losing to Hong Kong’s Ko Lai Chak and Li Ching at the penultimate stage and, as in the Women’s Doubles event, the second semi-final was an all-Chinese affair with Ma Lin and Wang Hao overcoming Chen Qi and Wang Liqin.

Alas for the host nation there was no sign of a Frenchman but that was not the situation in the Under 21 Men’s Singles event, where Emmanuel Lebesson beat Japan’s Hidetoshi Oya in the final to clinch gold. Two weeks earlier the Frenchman had won the same event at the Eurosib Russian Open and that was also to be the situation in the Under 21 Women’s Singles event.

Poland’s Li Qian repeated her St Petersburg success by beating Germany’s Ameie Solja in the final, the latter having caused the shock of the event by overcoming the player Li Qian beat in the final in Russia, Singapore’s Feng Tianwei; a player rated over one hundred places higher on the ITTF Women’s World Rankings than the German teenager.