China was the best nation in table tennis for a long time. This has changed now. Sora Matsushima from Japan is the new number 1 in the world. He is only 19 years old. He replaces Wang Chuqin from China. Wang Chuqin was the best player before. He falls back to place 4.
This is a big surprise for the sport. A Chinese player was always at the top since the year 2018. Timo Boll from Germany was the number 1 back then. Only a few players from other places were at the top before Matsushima. Werner Schlager from Austria and Dimitrij Ovtcharov from Germany were part of them.
The strength of China gets weaker. The team from China lost a game at the world championship in May. This did not happen for 26 years. China also lost against Japan at the Asian games. It looks different for the women. A Chinese woman leads the list there. Her name is Sun Yingsha.
