Dhs w 997

Chen Chen said:

Judging from your photos, sorry to let you know your W997 is a knock off version, or in China we called it “fu ke ban". According to the serial number, it was made last year. DHS already stopped making W997 for a while, which is a kind of test version for Malong. Malong is using W968 now. So all the W997 selling on the market are fake. He only used it offically when he was playing world team table tennis championship in Tokyo last year. But there was a small batch of real W997 selling on the market, but it was difficult to get hold of. The real one at least costs the double what you paid for.

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MegaZZ said:

I also have a W997 with the same date of production, mine is "w997 20140310 23". Looks like our two blades were made on the same day. There are a lot of different information and theory on these sources of DHS special blades. There is a whole host of them, just to mention a few of the more well known ones, special Hurricane Kings (for Wang Liqin), Hurricane Haos (for Wang Hao) and now Hurricane Longs (for Ma Long). On chinese table tennis forums there is much discussion about which ones are good, genuine etc.

Now the main stream theory goes that there are so called "fu ke ban" versions which are essentially replicas of what the Chinese National Team (CNT) is supplied with. So CNT is provided with specialized W997 or W968 lets say and then there are a whole lot of replicas as well which can be bought from some TT suppliers in China. They make quite alot for the CNT to test and try out but some are not picked because of weight, hand feel,stiffness or some other reason. In that way some of the specialized CNT blades do get leaked out of the team, for example the ones which are not picked by any member of the CNT and some people with connections to CNT gets hold of them and puts them on sale.

I have an acquaintance in Beijing who used to be on the CNT 2nd team and was a previous training partner back in the days of Zhang Yining. Every year I spend 2-3 days having coaching with him and once he actually showed me quite a few different types of the W997 blade, market version, replica versions (or "fu ke ban" version) and according to him one specialised blade which was leaked from the CNT.

I think I tested about 5 of them (there were multiple market and replica versions and one CNT version and they all had test rubbers) and even though I mostly do not go for DHS blades, I decided to buy one of the replica version. I did feel a clear difference between the market version and the replicas/CNT version but I felt that the replica was not so different from the one that was supposed to have come from CNT. The weight for the replica I bought was around 91 grams whereas the CNT one was closer to 100 grams so that was a consideration too. The replica version was sold to me for around $150 USD and I was happy with this. And yes the CNT version was on offer for close to $400 USD.

Anyway, according to my acquaintance this is the story behind the DHS blades but then again he was told this version by someone else. There is definitely a heavy element of "chinese whispers" if you know what I mean. In any case, this is what I know but I want to clarify that this this is just one possible version of things.

I feel the replica version or "fu ke ban" version is very adequate for my use and I am very happy with my choice. Now I better run before the goon squad is out to get me...gotta go!!

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