The draw ceremony of the 2013 World Championships to be held in Paris took place on Saturday the 11th May. There is no surprise with the top seeds as their positions are known before the draw. Germany’s Timo Boll and Dimitrij Ovtcharov who are the two biggest threats to China were drawn in Zhang Jike’s and Ma Long’s part of the draw. Also Ding Ning and Li Xiaoxia finalists of Rotterdam 2011 will possibly clash in the semi-finals.

malongwttc2013.jpg

Ma Long the no.2 seed - Photo by: Xinhua/Chen Shaojin

ITTF's President Adham Sharara stated: "I am very glad to welcome the world table tennis family again to Paris, 10 years after we had the highly successful championships here in 2003."

Men's Draw

In the men’s draw Xu Xin appears as the top seed and if both won their matches he would meet Zhang Jike in the semi-finals, but Xu Xin isn’t the only Chinese player in his side of the draw Ma Lin is also there. If the former Olympic champion manages to win his first match, we will see a repeat of one of the exciting matches in the last World Championships as Ma Lin would meet Kenta Matsudaira and the winner of this match is most likely to meet Vladimir Samsanov in round sixteen.

Zhang Jike also has a compatriot in his side of the draw this time in the form of Fan Zhendong, but the Chinese hopeful must beat Joao Monteiro first. If the defending champion manages to overcome this hurdle then he would have to face one of Chinas biggest threats Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the quarter-finals. The German star however has his own threat in his part of the draw Korea’s Seo Hyundeok, Patrick Baum or Werner Schlager and Hong Kong’s Jiang Tianyi.

The second seed of the main draw is Chinas Ma Long who could possibly meet team mate Wang Hao in the semi-finals; Ma Long doesn’t often have good results against Wang Hao at this stage after losing to him in semi-finals of both Yokohama 2009 and Rotterdam 2011 however it seems that Ma Long is in better shape this time. However Wang Hao must face Gao Ning or Chen Chian-An in order to reach the semi-final.

It isn’t an easy journey to the semi-final for Ma Long either as he must face Bastian Steger or Bojan Tokic in round thirty two, if he is then able to progress to the next round he will face Koki Niwa who defeated him at the 2012 Asian Olympic qualification tournament. If the second seed was to make it to the quarter-finals then he would meet Timo Boll and Jun Mizutani.

In an ITTF interview Zhang Jike expressed, "For me the world no.1 position is not important, what is important is winning the match. The top players at the end of the week will be revealed anyways".

Women's Draw

Meanwhile in the women’s draw the top seed will be China’s Ding Ning who could possibly face Li Xiaoxia in the semi-finals however before the penultimate stage the defending champion will have to defeat players such as Ai Fukuhara and Kasumi Ishikawa. The biggest threats towards Li Xiaoxia in her part of the draw include Sayaka Hirano of Japan and compatriots Chen Meng and Wu Yang.

In another part of the draw Liu Shiwen and Feng Tianwei are likely to clash in the semi-finals however in order to get there Liu Shiwen must beat players such as Iveta Vacenovska of Czech Republic, Seo Hyonwon of South Korea and Spain’s Shen Yanfei.

Feng Tianwei probably got the hardest draw as if she was to win her first match she would face Misaki Morizono of Japan, then she would meet Shiho Matsudaira of Japan or her compatriot Yu Mengyu. If she was to reach the round sixteen then she would meet Japan’s Hirolo Fujii or South Korea’s Seok Hajung. Then in the quarter-finals Feng would face one of these players, Zhu Yuling of China, Lee Ho Ching of Hong Kong or Jiang Huajun also of Hong Kong.

The main draw will start on Wednesday 15th May, it will certainly be interesting to see whether the draw will go as predicted or whether we will see some surprise upsets.

Join in on TableTennisDaily's full World Table Tennis Championships discussion here.

Like and tweet our articles to the World. Lets spread the word of Table Tennis.
Source: ITTF and TableTennisTa
Written by: Emily Standing
TableTennisDaily
 
Top