Team China seeks revenge at 2018 ITTF Men's World Cup

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China's Fan Zhendong and Lin Gaoyuan arrived in the host city Paris for the 2018 ITTF Men's World Cup on Wednesday. Their goal for is clear: To regain the championship lost in 2017.

Fan and Lin have already played against each other in the final of men's singles at the 2018 Asian Games before Fan beat Lin to claim the gold medal.

In 2016, Fan also won his first World Cup championship after defeating his compatriot Xu Xin in the final. Having been known as Team China's promising young man in the past, today's Fan is already one of the best table tennis players for the country.

By contrast, Lin's memory for the World Cup was not very pleasant. Back in 2017 in Belgium, he lost to Timo Boll from Germany 3-4, especially with remarkable leading advantage in hand. On the other hand, the good news for him is that Lin keeps a full-win record against Japan's Tomokazu Harimoto.

Timo Boll from Germany will pose a big threat to Chinese players at the 2018 ITTF Men's World Cup. /VCG Photo

In the past 38 ITTF Men's World Cups, China has won 23 championships. Since 2009 in Moscow, China took seven consecutive titles, showing dominance in table tennis. However, things changed in Belgium in 2017 as Boll knocked out Lin in the quarter-final and defeated Ma Long in the semi-final.

Boll, 37, though lost to Russia's Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the final of the 2017 World Cup, he already has two championships of the event (2002 and 2005) under his name. He took revenge against Ovtcharov 4-0 in February at the 2018 ITTF Europe Top-16 Cup.

In September, Boll took his seventh Single European Champion. As the No. 2 seeded player in Paris, he will be a big challenge to Team China.

Tomokazu Harimoto from Japan is not to be underestimated, either. /VCG Photo

The other big threat to China is the 15-year-old Harimoto from Japan. Having won men's singles champion at the Seamaster 2018 ITTF World Tour Lion Japan Open, Harimoto also entered semi-finals of the Tour in Australia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

He also defeated Fan Zhendong during the group stage at the 2018 Asian Games. Though it will be his first time to compete at the three major world events of table tennis in Paris, Harimoto is not to be underestimated.

Fan, Boll, Ovtcharov, Lin and Harimoto as the top eight seeded players of the event, will start from the round of 16 directly.

The 2018 World Cup will last three days (from October 19 to 21) and short schedule adds more randomness to the competition. Therefore, players cannot afford to ignore relatively weak rivals, not to mention the true big threatening opponents.