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Still smart from last year's loss, Chinese head coach Cai Zhenhua
vowed to give the defending champions Sweden a lesson in the coming
World Championships and take back the Swaythling Cup.
"We will take back the Swaythling Cup and give the Swedes a
good lesson," said Cai.
The 46th World Table Tennis Championships will be held in Japan's
Osaka from April 23 to May 5.
In last World Championships in Kuala Lumpur, the Chinese men's team
lost a nail-biter five-game final to an aging Swedish trio of Jan-Ove
Waldner, Jorgen Persson and Peter Karlsson, whose ages added up
to 100 years.
"We are in high spirits and confident to win back the team
championship," said 1996 singles and doubles Olympic champion
Liu Guoliang, whose defeats to Waldner and Persson doomed the Chinese
side to failure in the 2000 championship final.
In that nerve-racking final, fast attacker Liu lost the opening
game, the first of their seven encounters, to 1992 Olympic champion
Waldner.
In the deciding game, 1991 world champion Persson stunned a more
nervous Liu to win Sweden's first world team title in six years.
It turned out Liu had played the final with doping suspicions. He
tested positive for epitestosterone in an International Table Tennis
Federation (ITTF) Tour event in October 1999 and had not been cleared
by ITTF until last April.
ITTF cleared Liu's name on April 26 after a three-month-long investigation
showed "no evidence for exogenous origin of epitestosterone"
in Liu's samples and there was "no doping offense ".
"All turned out against us in last World Championships, "
said Cai.
Cai cited China's physical and technical advantages over Sweden
in the Osaka World Championships.
"Our players are young and highly motivated while the Swedes
are aging and have nothing new in their arsenal," he said.
Cai named Liu Guoliang (joint world No.5), Kong Linghui (No.2) ,
Wang Liqin (No.1), Ma Lin (No.3) and Liu Guozheng (joint No.5) for
the World Championship team event.
The 35-year-old Waldner, whose world ranking has tumbled to 11th,
world No. 13 Persson and world No. 17 and European champion Karlsson
are expected to form the Swedish team, again.
If everything goes as seeding, China won't meet Sweden until the
final, which feature three players from each team.
"All five players are world top players and I will pick the
three in best form," said Cai.
"But Sweden have only three old guns and still can't count
on young players," he added.
(People's Daily 04/23/2001)
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