Paris to host the 2011 Liebherr Men's World Cup for the second time – Table Tennis News
Liebherr Men’s World Cup is scheduled from November 11 to 13 and the event will be organised in Halle Georges Carpentier in Paris, France. The two French players to participate at the event include the 24-year-old Adrien Mattenet and Christophe Legout, who
has also been chosen as the representative by the Host nation.
It will be the 32nd time the event has been organised and France will be hosting it for the fifth time after 1995-96-97 in Nimes and second time in Paris after 2006. Ma Lin holds an outstanding record as he has won the event four times with Wang
Hao and Samsonov three times each. Jean-Philippe Gatien has won the World Cup in 1994 after a tremendous performance.
A total number of 19 players will participate in the event including the 2011 World Champion Zhang Jike and the 2010 World Cup winner Wang Hao. The six Champions from all different continents will also participate at the event that consists of Ko Lai Chak
from Asia, Timo Boll from Europe, Pradeeban Peter Paul from North America, Gustavo Tsuboi from Latin America, William Henzell from Oceania and Ahmed Ali Saleh from Africa.
The eight best players from the ITTF World Ranking have automatically qualified for the tournament including Jun Mizutani, Vladimir Samsonov, Joo Se Hyuk, Chuang Chih Yuan, Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Oh Sang Eun, Seiya Kishikawa and Michael Maze. The contest will
include two wild card entries, Adrien Mattenet and Tang Peng along with one player from the host nation, Christophe Legout. Austrian player Werner Schlager and Alexey Smirnov of Russian are in reserves for the upcoming event.
The Frenchman will be participating in his second Liebherr Men’s World Cup as his first appearance was in 1997 when he finished fourth. He will be looking forward to perform as the event is organised in his home country and he will have the edge of playing
in front of home crowd. Legout is undoubtedly the most talented player in France at moment and has made his country proud on many occasions. He has won the silver medal three times out of four appearances at the ITTF Pro Tour Men’s finals.
Christophe won the French Open in 1997 which has been his only ITTF Pro Tour win. It will be interesting to see how the 38-year-old performs at the Liebherr 2011 Men’s World Cup as all the mighty players from across the globe are warming up for the event.
Tags: