Congratulations to Werner Schlager for winning the Men's Singles Title in Paris. Here is a news clip from CCTV-5, courtesy of the fans and administrators at ttball.net. This is a transcript of what Cai said:
"We have to work hard on men's events, especially on men's singles. Next year at the Athens Olympics, the MS event will be very difficult. We need our players to improve on their thought process, their style, their techniquies, and their mental capacities."
Here is what Li Furong said:
"First, from the technical standpoint, we have some inadequacies. There are several areas where we are relatively passive. For example, serves and the receive of service. We will work hard on these in our training. Secondly, we do not have a great understanding of the principles of the 11-point games, in particular how to play when we are ahead. In all the key matches, we lost because we could not handle things properly when we were ahead. These are the things we need to work on in order to win the men's singles event next year."
UPDATE ON MAY 28: The Chinese media erroneously reported that Schlager just married a Chinese woman who used to play on the Shenyang table-tennis team. Schlager is considering taking legal actions against the source of that rumor.
(Chung's Notes: There are over 100 news articles covering the last two days of the Worlds. Due to other commitments, translations of the more interesting articles will be posted until later. There will also be extensive coverage of the event in the next Table Tennis World, to be published around June 7.)