August World Rankings 2014

July has been a month of resting for the World Tour circuit, but also two special events have taken place:
The European Youth Championships and the Commonwealth Games.





Chantal Mantz and Alexandre Cassin - 2014 EYC Junior Champions - Photos by: ITTF


The European Youth Championships were held in Riva del Garda, Italy and started with the team event for both juniors and cadets.

France again showed that it currently has the broadest selection of talented players, winning gold in 3 out of 4 categories. Only the cadet girls couldn't make it that far. There Romania won the final battle with Russia. Germany only took silver and bronze in the girls' categories but still did well overall with an average team ranking of 3.75.




Adina Diaconu and Rares Sipos - 2014 EYC Cadet Champions - Photos by: ITTF


France might've had the best teams, but do they also have the best individual players? This turned out to be totally different. Only 16-year old Alexandre Cassin managed to prove his quality after a very close semi final against Filip Zeljko of Croatia. In the final he beat Elias Ranefur of Sweden.

Romania and Germany performed better. With Adina Diaconu and Rares Sipos, Romania secured both of the cadet's gold medals. Final opponents were Lisa Lung of Belgium and Russia's Artur Abusev. Diaconu was also the most succesful player of the EYC with a gold medal in every event: Teams, singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

Finally the Junior Girls final was an all-German one. Big favourite was Nina Mittelham, the champion of last year. Mittelham started off well by winning the first set but then Chantal Mantz took over. In the end she finished her tournament with a golden 4-1 victory.




Feng Tianwei and Zhan Jian - Commonwealth Games Singles Champions - Photo by: ITTF


The Commonwealth Games were held in Glasgow, Scotland and have an Olympic-like setting for countires that were once part of the British Empire. Team Singapore provided the favourites in each draw of the event, led by top players Feng Tianwei and Gao Ning.

Also here the Games started with the team event. Biggest surprise here was the women's team of Malaysia, who upset by beating England 3-2 in the quarter finals and later a 3-1 victory against Australia was enough to reach the final. At the other side of the table Singapore quite easily accounted for Nigeria. A similar result in the final: Singapore clinched gold.
As expected England and Singapore reached the men's team final, the latter walking away with the gold after a 3-1 win. The unexpected here happened in the bronze medal match; it was not India but Nigeria who earned the medal through another 3-1 victory.

Singapore went on in the next stage of the Games by grabbing all gold medals except for the mixed doubles category: England combined forces and knocked out Singapore on its way to the final. The result was a clean sweep of medals for England, with husband and wife Paul and Joanna Drinkhall winning gold.

The singles events again featured all-Singapore finals. Feng Tianwei and Zhan Jian took gold, defeating runner-ups Yu Mengyu and Gao Ning.​