[Ti ricordi di me]Set a record for the highest ranking of Taiwanese players! He used the “ghost push” stunt to beat the legendary Chinese star – 动物

At last year’s Tokyo Olympics, even many people who didn’t pay much attention to sports used the broadcast to cheer on the hard-working Taiwanese athletes. Among competitions in Taiwan, billiards is considered an event that the Chinese pay the most attention to, whether it is Zhuang Zhiyuan, the “godfather of billiards” who has been fighting for many years, or Lin Yunru, the “classmate Xiaolin” who broke into the semifinals of men’s singles, or won bronze in mixed doubles Zheng Yijing, the “sister of billiards”.

Indeed, Taiwan has always been very competitive internationally in billiards: besides Zhuang Zhiyuan, who has participated in 5 Olympics, Lin Yunru is currently ranked 8th in the world. And before their top two men’s singles players, there was another one who was No. Penglong.

Jiang Penglong, born in 1976, has shown a very high biliary talent since he was a child: before graduating from elementary school, he won the three championships of the Liberty Cup, the Mandarin Cup and the Chairman Cup. He became the most followed young player in Taiwan at that time, therefore he was also recruited by coaches from all over the world. After thinking about it, he chose to enter the Tainan billiards training camp which coached Wu Wenjia, the world’s highest-ranked Taiwan men’s singles player at that time. With talent and hard work, Jiang Penglong quickly became a national player at the age of 15.

In the 1991 French Open, he won the silver medal in mixed doubles with Xu Jing, then, at the age of 18, he and his brother Wu Wenjia won the bronze medal in men’s doubles in the 1994 Asian Championships. In the same year, he also won the bronze medal with Xu Jing again. Competitive match won the silver medal at the Asian Games in Hiroshima. Two years later, at the age of 20, he took part in the Atlanta Olympics and set foot on the Olympic stage for the first time, but finally stopped at the group stage.

In 1997, 21-year-old Jiang Penglong decided to go to Europe to participate in professional club competitions under the encouragement of his coaches and relatives. Both mentality and technique improved a lot during this period. At that time, he teamed up with Olympic gold medalist Chen Jing to win the bronze medal in mixed doubles at the World Table Tennis Championships. In 1999, he won two Open Men’s Singles Championships and reached the top four in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).

The following year, he won the gold medals in men’s singles and men’s doubles at the Asian Table Tennis Championships, but unfortunately lost to Chinese player Liu Guozheng in the top 16 at the Sydney Olympics and missed the medal. The opponent he faced in this game was Liu Guoliang, the last champion and the first men’s singles player in Chinese history to win Olympic, World and World Championship gold medals.

At that time, everyone believed that Liu Guoliang would definitely win this match, but Jiang Penglong chased three games after losing one game before, and advanced to the semifinals with a “reversal win”. “He made his opponent shake his head in frustration many times. Although he lost to Wang Liqin, who was the world No. 1 at the time, in the semifinals and received a bronze medal, his outstanding performance in the semifinals is was enough to make him famous in the first fight, and he also won a bronze medal in the men’s doubles. It can be said that he gained a lot from the tournament.

Jiang Penglong’s main playing style is the Japanese-style candy bar, and his special ability is called “ghost push and block”. The direction of the ball is too late to react.

However, later, in order to check and balance the situation of Chinese rule, the International Billiard Association revised the rules of billiards many times. Jiang Penglong is no exception. His world ranking dropped to number 10 after 2004 and he was eliminated in the first round of the Athens Olympics that year.

In 2006, Jiang Penglong and Zhuang Zhiyuan in their early thirties won the silver medal in men’s doubles at the Duha Asian Games, the following year they won the bronze medal in men’s doubles at the World Championships and Zhang Yanshu. This is also his fourth time in the event. The subsequent 2008 Beijing Olympics was Jiang Penglong’s fourth and last time at the Olympics in her career, participating in men’s singles and men’s team events.

In 2009, 33-year-old Jiang Penglong retired from the national team after winning the men’s doubles silver medal at the East Asian Games. However, he still appeared in national competitions and in 2010 and 2011 he dominated the national table tennis championship two consecutive times, but it was only in 2012 that he officially announced his retirement and ended his playing career. .

After retiring, Jiang Penglong became a coach. In addition to educating the grassroots in the billiard classroom he founded, he also took on the position of coach of the national team. Last year’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic Men’s Team Competition and the current “Taiwan No. 1 Brother” Lin Yunru competed. You can see it from the sidelines. Recently, he was also invited to be a guest on the popular reality sports program “All-Star Games”. In the program, he and his young man Jiang Hongjie had a rare exhibition match.

Jiang Penglong once said that what he wants to do most now is to let the players he coaches one day be better than him. He also thinks for them from the players’ point of view through his more than 20 years of experience as a player and he strive for better opportunities for them The training environment, I believe it is his fans or students, will never forget the wonderful games he left and his contribution to billiards!

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