Fri, April 27, 2012
Liu Guoliang, head coach of China's men's national table tennis team, told the media that the main goal at the London Olympics was to get gold medals, April 26, 2012.
Close attention has been paid to who will make the final team in London, and Liu said Wang Hao, Ma Long and Zhang Jike should make the final cut, but the official announcement won't be made until mid-May.
Despite Ma Long's loss at the recent 2012 Asian Olympic Table Tennis Qualification Tournament, Liu remains calm and confident, and he says it is not a bad thing to lose one or two matches shortly before big events like the Olympics, and he sees this as a chance for proper adjustment and improvement.
Liu added that this will not affect his optimism about Ma Long. He said the process of selecting the right players depends more on their whole ability, especially their mental game.
This will be Liu's fifth Olympics since he first participated in 1996, when he won two gold medals. Table tennis has long been an indispensible part of his life. He says that if the nation needs him, he will be able to serve another 30 years, and he attributes much of his success to his coach Cai Zhenhua, who is now a high-ranking official at the General Administration of Sport of China.
