Ma long not in Olympics Singles?

Well that decision is still on Liu Guoliang

ma long vs zhang jike in the olympics final will be the most thrilling encounter, and i really hope jike will be at his best form. with it the match will be much more worthy of a gold medal.

personally i really love their encounter at slovenian open final previously, and i really hope they can repeat that.

so only 2 out of three then,! prob go with world ranking or will he give wang hao 1 more chance?
I would go with ma and zhang,,wang had 2 chances and lost..

Don't forgert that Wang Hao and Zahng Jike are the 2 nominated players for the single tournament and it's not so easy to replace one of them with Ma Long. Only way would be to take one of them completely out of the tournament and play neither singels nor team! So If Ma Long shall play singles Wang Hao or Zhang Jike are out of the team and i can't imagine Liu Guoliang do this..
So probably it will be Wang Hao and Zhang Jike in singels and Ma Long only team..

Originally Posted by Tadex

I disagree. It should be Wang Hao and ZJK or Ma Long. As good as ZJK and Ma Long are I still think they have minor problems. Ma Long is that he seems to get bad nerves and ZJK sometimes just doesn't show up until the second or third set which can be fatal in the Olympics against top competition. Wang Hao may have had an off year by his standards but he hasn't lost to a non-Chinese player since 2010 and that was RSM.

He got crushed by Dima at the World Team Cup 2011 But if it is true that Wang or Zhang couldn't play teams if they were kicked out of the singles by LGL, it seems pretty obvious that they will both play singles. And about Ma Long, the only player he lost to is Koki Niwa, who will most likely not be playing in the OS singles So there is not too much reason to hold one of them away from the event, they all have good odds against any other player.

Originally Posted by YosuaYosan

My best guess is that Ma Long will play in the team tournament and yep thats all..
Unless Ma Long show some real mental prowess he would have no chance, even probably for the next 2016 Olympics..

IMHO ma long has some real mental prowess, but thats just my opinion

Originally Posted by UpSideDownCarl

Are you sure about this. I did not realize that they qualified for SINGLES and that Liu Gouliang could not decide who plays what. I thought they just qualified and I thought Ma Long just qualified. Why would how they qualified determine that who can play singles? I don't really know anything, but that would seem stupid to me if how they qualified eliminated anyone specifically from singles without the coach being able to make a decision.

It would also reassert, to me, that the Olympics is no longer as important a tournament as it used to be. The best players should be able to go and play in the singles regardless of country. And they are not allowing that any more. There are several tournaments that will have a higher level of competition than the Olympic singles event because of the qualification process and the restriction of players to 2 per country for singles.

that is what my thoughts are exactly, does it really say the ZJK and WH are the singles players and ML is for the team competition or its still not decided yet?

Originally Posted by sxTT

that is what my thoughts are exactly, does it really say the ZJK and WH are the singles players and ML is for the team competition or its still not decided yet?

It's what i heard from several sources and what has been discussed a long time in our german forum
Some time ago (somewhere last year, can't exactly remember when) the federations had to nominate their players for singles and did it according to the world rankings at that time. So e.g. for Germany Timo Boll and Dima Ovtcharov were the two players and for China Wang Hao and Zhang Jike. The only way to replace one of these players with another one playing Singles would be to scratch them completely out (e.g. say they are injured) so they can't play Team then as well.

Hey guys, finally registered so I could reply to this thread...

Check this out: EDIT apparently I can't post links until I have 5 posts. I wanted to link an article on tabletennista(dot)com entitled "No pressure for Ma Long & Guo Yue" from which I took the ML quote below.

Ma Long: "Although I already knew that I won't be able to play in the Singles, I still have the honor to play for the Team. I just hope I would be able to fight a good battle then give glory to China in the Olympcis (sic)."
Initial qualifications for Olympics are based on the world ranking immediately after WTTC 2011, which meant that the first two spots for China went to WH and ZJK. Based on what I've read, LGL cannot sub Ma Long for either of those two in the singles without removing WH or ZJK from the tournament completely. So based on that, as well as Ma Long's quote, I think the chances of ML playing singles are very small.

It's pretty ridiculous that the path is clear for ZJK to win the "Grand Slam" over the 2011-2012 seasons when Ma Long has absolutely dominated him over that same period and has undeniably been the dominant World #1 as well. Unfortunately, ML's poor form at last year's WTTC seems to have created some lasting problems for him.

Ah thanks for the info Trismegistus. Kinda weird that you can complete your Grand Slam without meeting the world's no. 1 indeed I'd love to see Zhang Jike win the Olympics, but an encounter with Ma Long would be the ultimate final of course. Hopefully they will play many more matches against each other in the Pro Tours.