Before this year’s Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, I kept finding myself going back to the last one, the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games. That was where Wang Chuqin swept all four events he entered, making history as the first male player to win four table tennis titles at a single Games. In some ways, that run went beyond what even people inside the Chinese team seemed to expect from him.
The contrast stays with me most. The slightly odd (but cute!) haircut. The quiet face. Then he stepped onto the court and played like a completely different person, fast, explosive, attacking everything. For those days, Wang seemed to be everywhere in China’s sports conversation.
The timing made the run even more remarkable. CTTA had already marked 2023 as a major year, with the Durban World Championships in May, the delayed Hangzhou Asian Games in the fall, and the Paris Olympics quickly coming into view. The one-year postponement compressed the usual Olympic-cycle rhythm, pushing Hangzhou to less than a year before Paris.
For Wang, that meant trying to stay near peak form almost continuously while guarding his world ranking, holding his place inside an insanely competitive national team, taking on singles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles at the same time, and producing results that could ultimately decide whether he made the Olympic team.
1. Why Hangzhou Was Different
The 2023 Asian Games carried unusual significance in China even before table tennis entered the picture.
Across Asia, sport has long been tied to national image, regional rivalry, and influence. Sporting power obviously doesn’t equal national power, but success on a stage as large as the Asian Games can still project a country’s strength and status far beyond the field of play.
COVID pushed the 2022 Games into 2023, changing both the political context around the event and the sports calendar. Hangzhou marked the largest sporting gathering held in China after the country ended its zero-COVID restrictions, and after years of criticism over its pandemic policies, a polished international event with packed venues and thousands of athletes arriving from across Asia offered a visible chance to show that China had reopened, recovered, and was ready to put on the major international event again.
The Asian Games also hold a particular place in China’s sports history. The country first competed in 1974, has topped the gold-medal table since 1982, and hosted the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, the PRC’s first major international multi-sport event. For a generation of Chinese people, the Games came to mean more than medals, carrying memories of national pride and China’s rise in international sport.
Inside China’s sports system, the stakes looked much more practical.
There has long been a saying that the Olympics are the “big exam,” while the Asian Games are the “midterm.” For a team like Chinese table tennis, that makes the tournament a serious test of form, physical condition, mental stability, doubles chemistry, and how players handle pressure at a major event, with the results often shaping training plans, pairings, individual roles, and Olympic selection.
Hangzhou, though, arrived much later than usual. What normally would’ve served as a mid-cycle test had shifted directly into the final Olympic push, giving every major result much more immediate consequences.
In mid-May, CTTA published its Paris Olympic selection rules. A new points system would count results across major tournaments over the following months. The highest-ranked mixed doubles pair inside the team the next May would take the Olympic spot. In singles, major-event results earned selection points, with the top two players eventually taking the Olympic singles places. If those selections didn’t fill all three team spots, coaches could decide the remaining place directly, with doubles ability among the factors they could consider.
On paper, the system looked fair and transparent. The obvious catch was that if every result counted, getting the chance to play those matches counted too. Tournament entries, event assignments, doubles pairings, and coaching resources still came from inside the system. A points table could measure results, but it couldn’t make every player’s path to those results equal.
That was where Wang’s situation became complicated.
2. Prior to Hangzhou: More to Carry, More to Prove
By late 2022, Wang Chuqin had finally secured his place among the CNT’s core-three on the men’s side. It was a “finally,” but one that brought more responsibility than relief.
Part of that came from being left-handed in a CNT system that had long favored right-handed options. Wang was valuable everywhere, in singles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles, and the team event, so the more he proved he could carry, the more the team asked him to carry. His singles ambitions, however, didn’t always receive the same kind of tailored support, and his coaching situation over the years reflected that. Even after Xiao Zhan took over as his supervising coach in early 2023, Xiao’s main priority remained mixed doubles rather than Wang’s singles or overall development.
Then there was the competition inside the team. Ma Long, the captain and longtime standard for world table tennis. Fan Zhendong held the world No. 1 ranking and remained the wall everyone had to get through. Liang Jingkun, physically powerful and later known as “comeback king,” and Lin Gaoyuan, another experienced left-hander, had spent years inside the world top 10. Everyone could win internationally. Everyone could threaten someone else’s place.
Outside China, Tomokazu Harimoto, Truls Moregard, Lin Yun-Ju, Hugo Calderano, and others kept rising. As one of the leading players of China’s next generation, Wang carried another responsibility: help keep Chinese table tennis on top. For Chinese players, defending the country’s glory always comes first, and proving himself on the world stage was also how Wang protected his own place at home.
The pre-Hangzhou calendar in 2023 wasn’t as packed with major events as it is today, but Wang still played the Singapore Smash, the World Championships, two WTT Champions events, and two Contender-level tournaments, beating nearly every non-Chinese opponent he faced. The player he still struggled to get past consistently was Fan.
That made the Durban World Championships in May especially painful. Wang played 72 games across three events, won the mixed doubles and men’s doubles titles, and beat his longtime idol Ma Long in the singles semifinal to reach his first WTTC singles final. That marked a historic breakthrough for a left-hander and showed that Wang was ready to claim the No. 2 position inside the CNT, not just in the world ranking.
But Fan stopped him in the final.
From the outside, the silver medal looked extraordinary. Wang was younger and had survived one of the heaviest workloads at the tournament, while Fan had spent years at the center of the CNT’s singles structure, with more tailored support and far more experience against teammates on the biggest stages.
Wang saw it differently. By the end of the final, he later admitted, he could barely keep his eyes on the ball. The two titles he had already won couldn’t erase what had slipped away, and the final loss, in his own words, “hurt me to the heart.”
Late that month, CTTA announced the selection criteria for the Hangzhou Asian Games. Each association could send only five players per gender, with every event filled from the same five-player roster. The mixed doubles champions from Durban received priority, while the remaining places were largely determined by the singles ranking as of July 4.
On July 10, the final squad was announced. Wang was entered in all four events: men’s singles, men’s doubles with Fan Zhendong, mixed doubles with Sun Yingsha, and the men’s team alongside Fan, Ma Long, Lin Gaoyuan, and Liang Jingkun.
Wang/Sun, the world No. 1 pair and reigning world champions, led China’s mixed doubles lineup, with Lin Gaoyuan/Wang Yidi as the other pair. In men’s doubles, the freshly crowned 2023 WTTC champions Wang/Fan headed the lineup alongside Lin Gaoyuan/Liang Jingkun.
CNT head coach Li Sun explained it directly: “Paris will require players to compete across multiple events, just like at these Asian Games. This is a chance to test how they manage their physical reserves and adjust between events.” Everything pointed toward Paris, and Wang had been handed the fullest version of that test.
Then, right before Hangzhou, his singles form cracked.
He lost to Fan again in July at WTT Star Contender Ljubljana. Shortly before the Asian Games, Wang crashed out in the first round of the Asian Championships in Pyeongchang, losing unexpectedly to Yuta Tanaka in what was widely treated as the final warm-up before Hangzhou.
The timing could hardly have been worse. One of the CNT’s core players, and a potential leader of its next generation, had fallen at the opening hurdle right before one of the year’s biggest tournaments. Whatever confidence Wang had rebuilt after Durban suddenly looked fragile again.
He entered Hangzhou under enormous pressure, with plenty of self-doubt mixed in with everything the team expected him to handle.
Perhaps even the coaches and CNT leadership had never really seen Wang as their safest bet for the singles title, although that didn’t mean they expected less from him overall. He still had to guard his half of the singles draw, clear the non-Chinese contenders, and ideally secure an all-Chinese final, all while contributing across four events. When it came to winning the singles title, though, Fan remained the centerpiece of the plan, the player the system had trusted and built around for years.
That left Wang in a strange position, carrying enormous responsibility without quite the same confidence behind his singles chances.
Even for Coach Xiao, Wang/Sun’s mixed doubles result naturally carried more weight. From where I stood, singles could sometimes feel almost like dessert after dinner. Nice if you got it, but not the first thing the system needed from him.
The broader attention followed a similar pattern. Media coverage, public discussion, and commercial promotion naturally clustered around the safer, more established names, especially Ma Long and Fan, and after Wang’s early exit at the Asian Championships, few people were looking at him as the face of the coming singles title.
Longtime fans felt something different. Some later told me over coffee that, by then, they weren’t really thinking about whether he could win the Asian Games anymore. They just wanted Wang to get through whatever he was struggling with inside, stay healthy and positive, and find some joy in playing again.
I remember that because it captures the mood around him better than any ranking or points table could. The team still needed almost everything from him. Its safest singles expectations lay elsewhere. His longtime fans just simply hoped he’d be okay.
Then Hangzhou began.
3. Ten Days in Hangzhou
3.1 Men’s Team: From “I Can” to Hangzhou
Wang Chuqin’s Hangzhou Asian Games began with the men’s team event.
China’s main five-man squad swept through the competition and defended the title, with Wang playing on every match day. He beat Dinh Anh Hoang of Vietnam, Azzam Alim of Saudi Arabia, Izaac Quek of Singapore, Lin Yun-Ju of Chinese Taipei, and Lim Jonghoon of South Korea.
The team event also brought back one of the most memorable stories from Wang’s early career, the “six-hour growth” at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games.
Wang arrived in Jakarta at 18 years old and ranked No. 93 in the world. In the men’s team semifinal, he lost to Lin Yun-Ju, then ranked No. 36, although China still advanced to the final. As the youngest player on the team, Wang wasn’t expected to recover mentally and return to the table too soon, especially with only six hours between the loss and the gold-medal match.
Coach Liu Guozheng initially considered Liang Jingkun (rank 62) for the final, expecting South Korea to keep the same lineup it had used in the semifinal, including Jang Woojin (rank 22). But Liang hesitated. Only a month earlier, Jang had swept him 4-0. Liu then turned to Wang and asked whether he could play.
Wang didn’t hesitate. “I can. Just go all out.”
Only six hours after the loss, Wang stepped back onto the court against Jang, already having worked through some of the problems that had limited him earlier that day, and found a way to win.
That quick shift from frustration to action already said a lot about him. Wang understood the doubts around him and later spoke openly about questioning whether he was really good enough to become a world champion, all while knowing plenty of people around him were skeptical too. “I hope to prove with my results that I can play here, my own place.”
Five years later in Hangzhou, he was no longer the little-known 18-year-old ranked outside the top 90, trying to prove he belonged. But the instinct remained familiar. Absorb the loss, make the adjustment, and move forward.
When the next match comes, go all out.
That instinct would matter even more once his Hangzhou schedule started piling up.
3.2 Mixed Doubles, Men’s Doubles, and the Grind
After the team event, Wang entered the busiest stretch of any player’s Hangzhou campaign, with all three remaining events running alongside one another and sometimes landing on the same day. At one point, he played four matches in a single day. He also had two days with three matches each and another two days with two.
The mixed doubles run looked relatively straightforward on paper. Wang and Sun Yingsha swept familiar rivals Wong Chun Ting and Doo Hoi Kem in the quarterfinals, then Lim Jonghoon and Shin Yubin in the semifinals. Those matchups had become almost routine during the Paris Olympic cycle. The same pairs kept meeting, everyone knew everyone else’s patterns, and there weren’t many surprises left.
In the final, Wang and Sun faced teammates Lin Gaoyuan and Wang Yidi and took the title, making the first mixed doubles pair in Asian Games history to win back-to-back gold medals in the event.
Mixed doubles wrapped up on Day 9, Wang still had more waiting.
In men’s doubles, he partnered with Fan Zhendong. Both naturally played attacking games, but together they looked even more explosive, with Fan bringing power and stability while Wang added speed, early timing, and sharp coverage. Their strengths fed off each other, often turning one attack into the opening for the next.
They went through the entire event without dropping a single game. In the final, they swept Jang Woojin and Lim Jonghoon to take gold on October 1, China’s National Day. Winning at home against a strong South Korean pair gave the title extra emotional weight.
All the while, Wang kept moving through the singles draw. Between doubles matches, he beat Napat Thanmathikom 4-0, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran 4-0, Lim Jonghoon 4-0, and Wong Chun Ting 4-2 to reach the final.
The wins kept stacking up, but so did the physical and mental load. One event flowed straight into another, leaving little room to recover before the next match.
By Day 10, he had three gold medals in hand.
One match left.
The situation looked uncomfortably familiar. A few months earlier in Durban, Wang had also reached the men’s singles final against Fan after a packed multi-event run. By the time he got there, the strain had clearly taken its toll, and he couldn’t maintain his usual form.
Now, after ten demanding days and three title runs in Hangzhou, Wang had arrived at almost the same point again, while still carrying some of the uncertainty left by his early exit at the Asian Championships only two weeks earlier.
Physically fatigued. Mentally unsettled. Emotions mixed.
And once again, Fan was waiting.
Few expected Wang to win.
Fan remained the more established figure and the safer bet inside the Chinese team. Major-event responsibility, resources, and support had leaned heavily toward him for years. He had won the men’s singles title at the previous Asian Games, still held the world No. 1 ranking, and now had a chance to make history by winning it again.
Fan also knew Wang’s game extremely well, had far more experience winning on the biggest stages, and had beaten him many times, including in that painful Durban final.
Wang knew exactly who stood across the table. Asked before the final whether he felt confident he could beat Fan, Wang gave a strikingly measured answer: “I don’t think anyone in the world can really say they’re confident of beating Fan Zhendong.” This was his first Asian Games singles final, he added, and he hoped to learn from Fan, fight him properly, give everything he had, and leave no regrets.
So this wasn’t simply about whether Wang could collect a fourth gold medal.
Would Hangzhou end the same way Durban had? Would the workload catch up with him again? Would Fan pull him back into the same patterns that had beaten him before? Or, after everything Wang had already played through, did he finally have enough left to change the ending?
Five years earlier in Jakarta, an 18-year-old Wang had been asked whether he could go back out and play again only hours after a painful loss.
“I can.”
In Hangzhou, that answer was about to face a much bigger stage.
3.3 Singles Final and the “Four-Title Crown”
The men’s singles final at the Hangzhou Asian Games has often been described as a textbook classic, and it’s easy to see why. The match had almost everything you could ask for: incredible rallies, constant changes in placement, sharp angles, fearless attacking, top-quality drives, and one pressure-filled turning point after another.
By then, at least one kind of pressure had eased. With Wang and Fan both through to the final, Team China had already secured the men’s singles gold, which, on paper, gave both players a little more room to focus on their own title, pride, and ambition.
More importantly, both Wang Chuqin and Fan Zhendong were playing some of their best table tennis in months. They were so ready.
From Game 1, neither player wasted much time feeling the other out because they knew each other far too well for that. Fan immediately began varying his placement, repeatedly finding wide angles and using the reverse sidespin serve to create quick openings. Wang answered by attacking early and defending with purpose, refusing to let Fan settle into control.
At 8-8, Wang misread one of Fan’s serves and put too much force into a backhand flick, sending the ball out and falling behind 8-9. On the very next point, he went straight back to the same shot against another difficult serve. This time, he made it and leveled the game at 9-9.
Wang then handled another sharp placement change from Fan, took control of a long rally, and earned a game point, but he still couldn’t close it. Fan stayed calm, waited for his chance, and punished a late mistake from Wang to take the opener 12-10.
That was vintage Fan, capable of turning one small opening into an entire game. Wang’s response, though, already showed how he intended to approach the final. One missed shot wasn’t going to push him into a more conservative game, and one lost game wasn’t going to change the way he wanted to play.
Wang raced to a 5-0 lead in Game 2 behind explosive forehand drives and sharp backhand attacks, keeping Fan from launching his usual first strike. Fan gradually worked his way back by slowing the rhythm, stretching the rallies, mixing in a few lob serves, and cutting the gap to 8-7.
Wang called a timeout as Fan continued to close in, but the momentum didn’t shift immediately. Soon after, another lucky ball went Fan’s way, adding to Wang’s frustration. Fan kept pushing and reached game point first at 10-9.
Few players knew Wang’s habits and weak points better. Fan had played him many times, studied his patterns closely, and knew how a disappearing lead could make him hesitate or rush. This time, Wang stayed committed to his shots, won the next three points, and took the game 12-10.
Fan had erased a five-point deficit and pulled the game back toward his preferred rhythm, but Wang still found a way to close it out. For perhaps the first time that night, Fan looked unsettled. The younger opponent he knew so well was still playing with the same speed and fire, but now he was more composed, more certain of himself, and much harder to break.
Game 3 pushed that mental test even further. At 5-5, Wang suddenly took off, winning five straight points to reach 10-5. The game looked almost finished until the “iron” Fan reeled off six straight points, erased all five game points, and somehow turned 5-10 into an 11-10 lead.
In a matter of minutes, Wang had gone from being one point away from winning the game to facing game point himself. A swing like that can wreck a player mentally, especially against someone as relentless as Fan.
Wang attacked through the next three points and took the game back, 13-11.
It was probably the most dramatic game of the entire match, and it showed two very different kinds of toughness at once. Fan’s comeback showed exactly why he was one of the hardest players in the sport to finish off. Even when a game looked gone, he kept extending rallies, putting balls back on the table, and making every point feel heavier than the one before it.
For Wang, Game 3 went one step beyond what had happened in Game 2. This time, the comeback had already happened. The advantage was gone. Five game points had disappeared. The momentum had completely flipped. Yet he still trusted his shots, stayed on the front foot, and took the game back himself.
Fan adjusted in Game 4, varying the rhythm more deliberately and creating more chances to use his world-class counterattacking. Wang kept pushing forward, but Fan handled the speed better and repeatedly turned the longer exchanges in his favor. A few key backhand errors from Wang opened the door, and Fan finished the game 11-7 to tie the match at 2-2.
Instead of trying to beat Wang at his own pace, Fan disrupted his timing and forced him to work through a less comfortable rhythm. Wang didn’t appear rattled by the loss. If anything, the game gave him a clearer look at where Fan wanted the ball, which placements he was starting to favor, and where the next adjustment had to come.
By then, every game was feeding into the next, with each answer demanding another adjustment.
Game 5 belonged completely to Wang. He tore through Fan’s defense with blistering pace, heavy first attacks, and constant changes in direction. Some of the angles were outrageous even by the standards of this match, and Wang raced to a huge 9-2 lead and closed it out 11-4 to move ahead 3-2.
It was probably his cleanest attacking stretch of the final. His third-ball attack was sharp, his timing was early, and he kept catching Fan before Fan could settle into position. Instead of getting trapped in the long exchanges Fan preferred, Wang kept ending points on his own terms. With the game already far out of reach, Fan appeared to shift his attention toward resetting for the next one rather than burning too much energy on an unlikely comeback.
Fan came back hard in Game 6. With no room left for another loss, he took advantage of several rushed shots from Wang, created enough separation to control the game, and eventually finished 11-7 to force a decider.
The sixth game also highlighted one of Fan’s clearest advantages. In long, physically demanding rallies, he still looked better equipped to absorb the workload. Wang could stay with him for stretches, but Fan’s strength and endurance made him incredibly difficult to finish off.
Wang’s reaction after losing the game was just as important as the score. He showed no dramatic frustration, no visible collapse in body language, and no sense that the match had suddenly slipped away from him. He seemed to accept what had happened and move on.
Then came Game 7.
Wang opened with the sharp third-ball attacks and jumped ahead 4-1. Fan answered immediately with six straight points to surge ahead 7-4. This was the moment when everything that had happened in the previous six games seemed to converge.
Wang had already watched leads disappear, been dragged through long rallies, responded to repeated tactical changes, and fought through one momentum swing after another. Now he was three points down in the deciding game of an Asian Games final against Fan Zhendong, the world No. 1 at the time.
Wang still didn’t play safe.
He stepped in closer, took more initiative, and attacked his way back into the game. Instead of waiting for Fan to make a mistake, Wang went after the match himself, ripping a series of high-risk winners until he reached match point.
Fan saved the first one with another long serve, forcing Wang to win it one more time. On the next point, Wang shut the door.
11-8. Four games to three.
Fan had pushed him to the absolute limit, leaving no easy stretch and no comfortable path to the title. At 4-7 in the final game, against one of the most experienced and mentally durable players in the world, slowing down and waiting for an opening would’ve been understandable.
Wang did the opposite. He became even more himself.
Reckless? Maybe. But that was Wang.
Across seven games, Fan tested almost every part of Wang’s game. He took key points from him, erased big leads, dragged him into physical rallies, changed the rhythm, and forced him to recover from momentum swings that had broken him in the past.
Wang kept trusting the qualities that had defined him from the beginning: speed, timing, nerve, instinct, and above all, the willingness to keep going forward when the safer choice was sitting right there.
The final point gave Wang the men’s singles title and completed his fourth gold medal of the Hangzhou Asian Games, following gold in the men’s team, mixed doubles, and men’s doubles.
3.4 From “I Can” to “I Did”
The “Four-Title Crown” carried much more meaning than a perfect medal haul.
Wang had spent years without a regular supervising coach. As a left-handed player, he hadn’t always received the same coaching attention or support as some of his right-handed teammates. For a long time, he was also the player people remembered for the matches he couldn’t close, the chances he let slip, and the moments when talent alone wasn’t enough.
There had been plenty of “almost,” plenty of “not yet,” and plenty of times when the conversation around him focused on what he still lacked.
Hangzhou gave him a different answer.
The player who had spent years falling short had gradually learned to believe, “I can win.” In Hangzhou, he finally reached the point where he could say, “I did.”
The four titles weren’t the end of anything, and they didn’t mean the road ahead would suddenly become easier. There would still be bigger matches, harder losses, more doubts, and more moments when he would have to sacrifice himself all over again.
That was exactly why Hangzhou mattered. It changed the direction of the story.
Four events and four gold medals showed more than how much Wang could win. For years, he had been chasing the version of himself who could stand in a moment like that and not flinch.
In Hangzhou, he finally met him.
4. Three Years Later: Now They Look to Him
It’s September 15, 2026, less than a week before the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games begin. The Chinese national team has just finished around 20 days of closed training in Shanghai and will head to Japan soon. From what we’ve heard, Wang has been training just as hard as he always has.
I wrote more about Wang’s training in the past here: The Weight of Three Fronts
This time, he’ll enter three events instead of four, with no men’s doubles. I wouldn’t call that a relief though. The schedule may look lighter on paper, but the responsibility he carries into this Asian Games has changed completely.
Three years have flown by, and the world of table tennis has changed faster than we could’ve imagined. Four months ago at the London World Team Championships, Wang helped China through an extremely difficult title defense. Soon afterward, he was officially named the captain of the Chinese men’s team.
Now he arrives at the Asian Games in a completely different position. For the first time, Wang will take the team into the competition alongside Lin Shidong, Wen Ruibo, Xiang Peng, and Huang Youzheng, none of whom have competed at an Asian Games before. In some ways, it may be China’s most uncertain men’s Asian Games lineup in decades.
In Hangzhou three years ago, and even in Paris two years ago, Wang entered the team events looking up to the older teammates around him and trying to prove that he belonged. Now he’s the one four Asian Games newcomers will look to when things get difficult.
Wang and Sun Yingsha will reunite in mixed doubles as well. They haven’t held the world No. 1 ranking as a pair for some time and haven’t been partnered regularly in recent competitions, but on another major stage, CNT has turned back to the world’s No. 1 men’s and women’s singles players in the hope of keeping China at the top of mixed doubles.
I’ve always questioned whether CNT coaches and leadership fully account for how much competing across several events can take out of a player, especially the extra demands mixed doubles can place on a male player in today’s increasingly competitive singles field. Some of China’s main rivals have gone in another direction. Players such as Tomokazu Harimoto and Jang Woojin have at different times been freed from mixed doubles, men’s doubles, or both, allowing them to put more of their energy into singles.
I also sometimes wonder whether CNT’s injury protection, recovery planning, and logistics match the level of its dominance at the table. No one outside the team can know exactly how those decisions are made, or exactly what the right balance should be, but after watching how much Wang has carried over the years, I still question how carefully the system weighs the physical and mental cost of asking one player to cover so much.
In Hangzhou in 2023, Wang was still trying to prove that he could handle the biggest moments and trust himself. At Aichi-Nagoya, he has to handle his own singles and mixed doubles matches while also being the steadying presence for a young, inexperienced team around him.
Whatever Aichi-Nagoya brings, I hope he can carry that same belief he finally found in Hangzhou.
Enjoy the Games, Wang. Be yourself, trust the work you’ve put in, and when the moment comes, trust yourself again.
Leave a Reply