Reverse engineering chinese dominance

Brs

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So maybe the more interesting question is, what do the tiny number of non-chinese pros who can seriously compete with CNT A have that allows them to do it?

I suppose Ito has killer serves, a weird game to the point of uniqueness, and relentless attacking attitude.

Timo has ?

Is anyone else playing today even in this club?
 
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So maybe the more interesting question is, what do the tiny number of non-chinese pros who can seriously compete with CNT A have that allows them to do it?

I suppose Ito has killer serves, a weird game to the point of uniqueness, and relentless attacking attitude.

Timo has ?

Is anyone else playing today even in this club?

A style that the Chinese yet hasn’t decoded? Falck had a good run but I guess it’s over. Either Ito has a god given talent or it’s just time until she’s decoded.

Timo is great but he hasn’t really dominated the Chinese.
 
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Those national rubbers are available to Korean and Japanese players. Korea has DHS sponsored players (Jang Woojin) and many other players who use Hurricane in forehand. Japan has women who use Hurricane (Ishikawa, Hayata). None of these players would use inferior rubber if it was all they had access to. D09C is clearly a step in that direction, but like I said, we will see what the contribution is in a few years. The players that will probably benefit the most are Harimoto and Lin Yun Ju as they need such rubbers as they get better. But it is not as big a factor as you think. There are so many things that the best Chinese do after years of competition and selection that the short push is just one element. After all, FZD was predominantly a backhand flicker and he was #2 in the world with that style before switching to his short pushing style.

Nexy Korea gets those "National" rubbers and makes offers to their distributors to buy them. I have resisted, but on my last order to buy a blade for someone, tossed in their offer. I will prolly give the 2 national rubbers to ttd member erm, who could use those personally or know who could best use them.

I know Der_Echte is gunna go nowhere fast using any kind of H3 no matter how much steroids pumped into it.

EDIT: In before the Goon Squad chases me down for possession of more than ONE national version rubber. Quick, Carl, activate the dummy homing device over Krooklyn Bridge ASAP !!
 
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It's actually all of them - equipment, techniques, tactics, psyche, coaching, training, knowledge, resources, support, state-backed program, the whole nine yards. Even in China, it can't be stressed enough that "having cracked the code" is the key to their long-lasting success.

Niwa and Ito have openly admitted the difficulty of shots coming from CNT players because of H3. Niwa, in particular, has said their 3rd ball is so frightening. Mizutani has touched on their focus of FH and related footwork in training. Matsu-ken has mentioned how they always handle a certain shot a certain way, no exception, which makes it so hard to deal with.

Yeah. I am good with the idea that it is all of them. But I do think Baal stumbled upon something very important when he mentioned how much China CARES. I kind of feel that is the intangible. As a nation, as a people, and the government is included, they just care more than everyone else which is why they have all of that so together in the first place. So, it is sort of like the glue that holds all the rest together. And isn't it their national sport?

And it is true that there are advantages to things you can do with a rubber that has the kind of gears that allow such proficiency in short game and power in mid-distance game. But the power aspect of H3 would be harder to take advantage of without the amount of training their teens have been able to put into the game by the time they are hitting 15-17 years old.
 
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The equipment is irrelevant. China could be forced to use any reasonable brand and rubber and after 1 month of practice they would still dominate the world championships. No other country in the world, except maybe North Korea, could take that many kids and make them practice that hard. Because this system has been in place for so long, the knowledge gap and the infrastructure gap (number of potential players, practice partners and coaches) is insurmountable. Sweden did well in the past because they had Waldner who is a once in a lifetime type player and Person who is also a once in a lifetime type player but is kind of overshadowed by Waldner. Once those two got older, China completely dominated again.

I just don't see any way anyone is going to compete with China because there is no desire in other countries to do what is necessary to beat them. I also feel if Europe were allowed to compete as a country, China would still win the world championships year after year. If the top 40 players in Europe lived together in a training camp all year round, they would stand a better chance but that won't happen anytime soon.
 
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The equipment is irrelevant. China could be forced to use any reasonable brand and rubber and after 1 month of practice they would still dominate the world championships. No other country in the world, except maybe North Korea, could take that many kids and make them practice that hard. Because this system has been in place for so long, the knowledge gap and the infrastructure gap (number of potential players, practice partners and coaches) is insurmountable. Sweden did well in the past because they had Waldner who is a once in a lifetime type player and Person who is also a once in a lifetime type player but is kind of overshadowed by Waldner. Once those two got older, China completely dominated again.

I just don't see any way anyone is going to compete with China because there is no desire in other countries to do what is necessary to beat them. I also feel if Europe were allowed to compete as a country, China would still win the world championships year after year. If the top 40 players in Europe lived together in a training camp all year round, they would stand a better chance but that won't happen anytime soon.

It was just not Persson that was overshadowed by Waldner. Our national team at the time also had:
Appelgren
Lind
Von Scheele
(Peter) Karlsson
(+ some others that are way better compared to any of our current national team members)

Pretty much all of them were WR top 20 (if not even top 10) and most of the time didn't get to play in the teams event. They had some pretty good training camps that quite often was visited by the likes of Primorac, Saive etc. These training camps are quite often pointed out by Waldner and Persson as a key success factor.

As a side note: It seems that the Swedish TTA has finally come to their senses and will promote Persson to become the head coach of the national team (if one is to believe the media rumours). It's completely insane that they haven't used his competence to the full extent in the past 10 years.
 
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It was just not Persson that was overshadowed by Waldner. Our national team at the time also had:
Appelgren
Lind
Von Scheele
(Peter) Karlsson
(+ some others that are way better compared to any of our current national team members)

All of those players and Ulf Karlsson were definitely awesome players. Having that many quality players definitely helped out making the training camps extremely beneficial.
 
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There is a reason(s) why Stellan Bengston has been based out of Southern Kalifornia - instead of Sweden - for what seems like decades.

Dude wasn't exactly chopped liver, many still do not know he is the youngest world champion of the sport and that was and is a record from before many people were even born.
 
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Musaab, that makes little sense to me. Even if the color restriction rules were lifted entirely the CNT (and anybody else) would still be free to use black H3.

You are right , they could use it in black even if ITTF allowed other different colors on both sides.

I couldn't find an explanation to ITTF decision , allowing other colors but then fixing the black.
 

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It was because black goes with everything. ITTF are style mavens.
 
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I couldn't find an explanation to ITTF decision , allowing other colors but then fixing the black.

I'm not supportive of these rules; I would very much like to use the same (black) rubber on FH and BH.

However, I do think I understand the rationale. The twiddlin', footstompin', gruntin' material players wreaking havoc in the early '80s gave rise to a color rule that was meant to guarantee visual distinctiveness between FH and BH rubbers.

Being able to tell the difference is key. The current rule is: black and bright red, and the proposed new rule is: black and a bright color from a particular color palette. Colors from that palette just might not be sufficiently distinctive (think trump-colored vs. red), but the entire palette is probably chosen to be distinctive from black ("bright colors").

I actuall don't know how this works out for several forms of colorblindness, but as I said, I'm not supportive of this rule and find it hard to defend it, even though I see the historical rationale and the rationale behind the proposed change (and the limited scope of that change).
 
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Yep. You just have to look at the original reason for fixing black and red. Pips players and antispin players using the same color on both sides and twiddling between grippy and anti rubber so the opponent could not see which side was being used. The idea was that black provided contrast so you could immediately see which side was pips or anti.

So, one side black and one side a brighter color is still for the same reason it always was.
 
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Serious question: do you think Calderano is anything les than the chinese in terms of physical fitness ?

I'm in no way qualified to say this other than from watching a lot of YouTube but, if pressed I would say that Calderano could probably keep up with the CNT in terms of physical fitness. What conclusion would you draw from that?
 
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If H3 is not that important for the CNT, why would ITTF exempt it when they decided to allow other colors for the rubber ? Like you can choose many colors but only on one side but you need to keep the black one , AKA : guys you could keep ur DHS thing unchanged let us pass this rule though

The ITTF does not actually LIKE Chinese dominance. They would prefer things were more competitive, clearly it would help grow the sport in other countries, so there is really no conceivable way they decided one side should be black so the CNT could keep their "Secret Weapon Magic Rubber That Makes Them Invincible[SUP]TM[/SUP]". (Which you can buy yourself at the low low price of $300 per sheet at ProPongScam.Com). Wait, is that a legit site? Better write a post here to find out.*

A far more likely explanation is that they very much want to make sure the two racket sides are visually distinctive to every player (including people who are not good at seeing color).


*Bought a sheet and you're still 1900? That's because it only works with the right booster, which is a closely guarded secret.
 
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One thing about the theory that Chinese player seems to take the offensive first, in any match I have watched where there were two offensive players and one was better than the other, the better player took the offensive first most of the time provided he wanted to. On a very big mismatch, in a match that didn't matter, I have seen the better player let the opponent open first, but that was the better player being nice.

Now I do think there could be a small point to an advantage to DHS tacky rubber for short game that helps. I don't think it would be such a big factor, because the player with higher skills would still be able to control the short game better. I also think the offensive side of things would be handicapped by H3 if the top CNT players did not have as much training as they have. But when you are able to impart more than a certain amount of impact into your contact over and over on every shot, then H3 excels.

I also think looking at physical strength and athleticism without considering level of sport specific training and number of hours logged in sport specific training is kind of silly. Is Hugo Calderano as physically fit as Ma Long? Is Lebron James as physically fit as Ma Long? The question is besides the point. You can take any top athlete from any other discipline, and have him run through multiball training and show that his physical fitness can be taxed. You can take any top CNT player and have them try to run full court fast break drills or drills soccer players would run and see them fall apart quickly as well. It means nothing to how well each plays the sport they train for.

And if Ma Long logged 12,000 more hours of table tennis specific training between the ages of 6 and 15 than Hugo Calderano did, then, in a sense, it is kind of amazing that Calderano is even close to being able to compete against Ma Long in the first place.
 
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