WUG 2025...

[AJ Scott]

That's the World University Games which is an "Olympics" of sorts for college athletes of the world.   It's being held in Germany and it starts this Thursday at 4 am and goes on thru the 24th: https://rhineruhr2025.com/en/schedule#/h2h-sports-schedule-session/TTE/* [TT schedule].  I think there's a livestream page somewhere, but I can't seem to find it now.  Last I saw it, I think it said the TT livestreams would start this Friday

Anyhow, I'm wondering, is Amy Wang going to play again this time around?  Some of you might remember she played the last time...  Unfortunately, they haven't given out the team rosters yet, so I have no idea who's playing this year.  You might remember that, last time, Idesawa Kyohka, a Japanese chopblocker, faced the then world's no. 6, Qian Tianyi of China in the women's singles final.  It was a spectacular match that Qian just barely won in the end

[Dan Wang]

I think I saw on IG that MLTT player Kotomi Omoda will also be playing for Japan but I don’t see that anymore so I’ll need to check on that.

I also saw that Sophia Klee will be playing for Germany.

For the US team, trials were held at the NCTTA championships in April.

Results at 

http://www.nctta.org/champs/2025/wugtrials.html

2025 College Table Tennis Championships - Results

The men’s team will be all players from UC Berkeley and UCLA. They will be led by Sid Naresh and Ved Sheth (who actually beat Sid in the finals of that). Also on the team are Kai Zarehbin, Ryan Wu, and Ethan Liu.

The women’s team will be led by Joanna Sung, and sisters Angie & Emily Tan. They will be joined by NYU players Anastasia Wang and Tiffany Lam.

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 12:43 PM AJ Scott <2ajs...@gmail.com> wrote:

That's the World University Games which is an "Olympics" of sorts for college athletes of the world.   It's being held in Germany and it starts this Thursday at 4 am and goes on thru the 24th: https://rhineruhr2025.com/en/schedule#/h2h-sports-schedule-session/TTE/* [TT schedule].  I think there's a livestream page somewhere, but I can't seem to find it now.  Last I saw it, I think it said the TT livestreams would start this Friday

Anyhow, I'm wondering, is Amy Wang going to play again this time around?  Some of you might remember she played the last time...  Unfortunately, they haven't given out the team rosters yet, so I have no idea who's playing this year.  You might remember that, last time, Idesawa Kyohka, a Japanese chopblocker, faced the then world's no. 6, Qian Tianyi of China in the women's singles final.  It was a spectacular match that Qian just barely won in the end

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[AJ Scott]

Ok, I found the livestream page: https://rhineruhr2025.com/en/schedule/broadcast.  The 1st TT livestream starts this Saturday at 1:30 pm with the Women's Team Semifinals here: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category/events/table-tennis-women-semi-finals

And then, they'll show the Women's & Men's Team Finals starting at 8 am Sunday morning here: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category/events/table-tennis-women-team-final

To watch the upcoming livestreams of TT or any other sport, just go to the livestream page above, click the date and then scroll down the list that pops up to find TABLE TENNIS or whatever sport you're looking for and then click LIVESTREAM on the right.  I would love to know who's playing for the top TT countries.  They unfortunately haven't released that info yet

When looking at the schedule, pls. remember that Germany is 6 hrs. ahead of us

[AJ Scott]

Here's the ITTF write-up: https://www.ittf.com/2025/07/17/table-tennis-gets-underway-today-at-fisu-world-university-games/

And here is the player list: https://rhineruhr2025.com/en/schedule#/h2h-sports-entries/TTE/*

The women's singles finalist from the last time around, Idesawa Kyohka of Japan (出澤杏佳 -- "ee-DEH-sa-wa key-OL-ka"), is back again this time around.   You might remember that she, then unranked, took out the top seed, Qian Tianyi of China, then ranked 6th in the world, in the team event, but narrowly lost to Qian in the women's singles final.  One of the other Chinese that Idesawa went thru in the singles event was Wang Xiaotong, who also is returning this week.  I think she has beaten Wang twice since the last iteration of the WUG.  Right now, she's ranked 119th in the world.  I hope she & Wang meet again, bc their matches are always spectacular

The Chinese are also playing Han Feier, Zhao Shang and a chopper, Yang Yiyun, on the women's team.   In addition to Idesawa, Japan is playing Aoi Sakura, Asada Mana and Omoda Kotomi who, as Dan has pointed out, plays in the MLTT.  I'm not familiar with Aoi or Asada...

Pips-out/anti-spin players...  The only one I think I recognize on the men's side is Sun Zheng of China, who I believe is a chopper.  As for the women, the only ones I recognize are Idesawa Kyohka (long pips/bh, short pips/fh), Agathe Avezou of France (chopper--her name is pronounced "ah-GAT av-ZOO"), Wong Hoi Tung of HK (short pips/bh?), Zauresh Akasheva of Kazakhstan (short pips/bh), Anna Brzyska of Poland (medium pips/bh, short pips/fh?), Tan Zhao Yun of Singapore (chopper), Cheng Pu-syuan of Chinese Taipei (long pips/bh), Tsutsui Yuki (or Yuki Tsutsui) of Germany (by way of Japan--short pips/fh?), Yang Yiyun of China (chopper), Markhabo Magdieva of Uzbekistan (short pips/fh?).

The male player with the highest ITTF ranking is Kao Cheng-jui of Chinese Taipei who's currently ranked 25th in the world.  The highest ranked female is Wang Xiaotong of China who is 36th in the world currently.

One big name who's playing--apart from Kao Cheng-jui--is Eduard Ionescu, the Romanian no. 1 and world's no. 55 as well as his nat'l teammate, Iulian Chirita, ranked 63rd in the world.  It'll be interesting to see how deep either one of them goes into the singles draw.

Again, the livestreams start Saturday afternoon at 1:30 with the Women's Team Semifinals.  See my last post for links to the schedule and the livestreams

On 7/16/2025 1:53 AM, AJ Scott wrote:

Ok, I found the livestream page: https://rhineruhr2025.com/en/schedule/broadcast  The 1st TT livestream starts this Saturday at 1:30 pm with the Women's Team Semifinals here: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category/events/table-tennis-women-semi-finals

[AJ Scott]

I've just discovered a REPLAY page if you can't watch the livestreams: https://www.fisu.tv/rhine-ruhr-2025-fisu-games-summer-replays

I myself missed the livestream today, so I'm looking at the REPLAY page and see only one TT video that's 2 hours long.  It appears the cameras are on Table 1, so that must be the "TV table".  I don't know if the other semifinals were filmed or not.

Anyhow, the match they're showing in the replay video is the China - Germany men's semifinal: https://www.fisu.tv/rhine-ruhr-2025-fisu-games-summer-replays/videos/table-tennis-men-team-semi-finals-07-19-2025

I don't know the name of the German coach, but the Chinese coach is none other than the great Ding Song, the player who ushered in the modern era of defense.  A lot of people out there believe that Joo Sae-hyuk is the greatest chopper of all time, but he was basically a Ding Song clone, like Chen Weixing and Panagiotis Gionis.  They all came up in the late 90s.  Ding Song was on that team that took out Sweden in the 1995 Worlds.  Anyhow, for years now, Ding has been coaching on the Chinese junior team.  I wonder if he's training the next generation of choppers?

Which reminds me--there's one thing from my previous post I want to correct--I said that Sun Zheng might be a chopper...  Well, he plays match 2 in this video and he is not a chopper.

Ok, so, the next livestream starts tomorow (Sunday) morning at 8 am and it'll the Women's and Men's Team Finals: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category/events/table-tennis-women-team-final

Here's yet another link--the NEXT LIVE EVENT page: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category [upcoming livestreams].

Also, this coming week will be chock-full of TT...  The WUG goes on thru Thursday and WTT Contender Lagos and WTT Contender Buenos Aires both start on Tuesday and go on thru the weekend.  More on that to follow...

[Dan Wang]

China lost in both team finals, both 3-2, against Japan on the women's side and Chinese Taipei on the men's side.

Kyoka Idesawa won 2 matches again, this time both 3-0. Kotomi Omoda won the decider 3-0 against chopper Yang Yiyun.

TPE won despite Kao Cheng-Jui losing both of his matches.

Sun Zheng was almost the hero for China despite not having a world ranking, as he beat Kao then came close to doing so against Feng Yi-Hsin. Feng got hot at the right time, in the 5th game of the 5th match.

It was the first time China failed to win gold in the men's team event, after winning it 9 straight times. 

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[AJ Scott]

And it was the 1st time the Chinese women had failed to win gold vs. the Japanese.  The Japanese women had lost the 4 previous times to Team China.

I did not expect Omoda to beat chopper Yang Yiyun--especially as decisively as she did.  Y'know, I've been wondering about her--is she Chinese or Japanese--or both?  I think I watched one match of hers last year (at the US Open) and could've sworn I heard her speaking Chinese to her opponent and I think I heard her speaking Chinese again today when she was playing against Wang Xiaotong.  As I've mentioned before, one way to translate her first name, "Kotomi", is "lucky snake", as in a lucky person born in the Year of the Snake on the Chinese calendar.  Well, she lived up to her name today--2025 is the Year of the Snake and she was pretty lucky today in pulling off the upset of Yang Yiyun in the Gold Medal match 

Anyhow, the Chinese Taipei men's team is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the very near future--with 4 guys that are tough to beat...  And I think in the men's rankings, we are going to soon see a World's No. 1 not from the CNT for the 1st time in a while--I believe since 2018 (Dima Ovtcharov & Timo Boll).

Looking over the broadcast schedule, it appears the next TT livestream will be Tuesday morning, starting at 7:10 am and then going for about 7 hrs--it'll be mostly doubles (men's, women's, mixed) with some singles action: https://www.fisu.tv/featured-category/events/table-tennis-semi-finals.  There's 2 other TT livestreams immediately after that one

Also on Tuesday, the WTT Contender Lagos starts at 4 am and goes on thru Saturday and WTT Contender Buenos Aires starts around 4 pm in the afternoon and goes on thru Sunday.  More to follow on both

[Dan Wang]

The MS final was all-Russia. Grebnev is WR 761 while Sidorenko doesn’t have a WR. Sidorenko won 4-1. In the semis, he beat Ionescu 4-0. Grebnev beat 2 players from China here.
AIN is 5th different association to win gold here. China fails to win any men’s events.

Zhao Shang won WS, after getting silver in WD and WT. In 2023, she won gold in WD with Qian Tianyi and bronze in WS (losing to Qian).

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