Li Jiawei qualifies for Volkswagen Women’s World Cup after Park Mi Young walks out
2011 Volkswagen Women’s Table Tennis World Cup is scheduled from October 28-30 and the event will be held in Singapore. The tournament promises to be the most challenging as the best players are warming up to fight for the top positions.
Around 20 top Women table tennis players from across the World will be invited to the event and the winner will be awarded with prize money worth $150,000. The Tournament was first held in 1996 and is organised every year since then as Deng Yaping of Hong
Kong was the first winner of the contest.
Volkswagen Women’s World Cup 2011 will be held at the Toa Payoh Sports Hall in Singapore as players from China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and other countries will participate at the event. The top Singapore player Feng Tianwei who is currently Number 4 at
the World ranking will fight for the title in front of the home audience. She will be accompanied by Wang Yuegu who is ranked at 10thand Li Jiawei currently ranked 19th in the ITTF ranking. Jiawei was to fight with World Number 21 Korean
player Park Mi Young for a place in the tournament. However, Park Mi has withdrawn from the tournament which means that Jiawei has automatically qualified for the event.
Zhang Yining of China has won the World Cup the most number of times as she dominated in 2001-2 and 2004-5. She was the first runner up in 2006-7, while she secured third place in 2003. Wang Nan has also won the event on four occasions including 1997-8,
2003 and 2007.
It will be mixture of youth and experience as a lot of new faces have shown impressive performances in the current year and they will have to prove themselves against the strongest and more experienced players. Some of young talent to feature in the tournament
includes Dina Meshref of Egypt and Ariel Hsing from United States.
Wu Xue is undoubtedly the favourite for the competition as the 31-year-old has loads of experience and has the tendency to dominate whenever there is an opportunity. The young players like Dina Meshref and Ariel Hsing are good but they have never played
with a high calibre player like Xue. She is a tremendous left hand player and is considered by many to be an expert in service and for playing an aggressive game.
During the Spanish open earlier this year Xue proved that she is capable of fighting at the highest level. She played an outstanding game in a match that was stretched till the last minute even though she lost but her dominance could clearly be felt.
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