周日，在河南郑州举行的国际乒联世界巡回赛总决赛最后一场比赛中，中国选手樊振东以4-1击败队友马龙，赢得了男子单打冠军。
这是继女单（陈梦）、男双（许昕/樊振东）和混双（许昕/刘诗雯）之后，中国选手在本次比赛中赢得的第四个冠军。
Chinese players won four titles at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Zhengzhou, the capital city of central China's Henan Province.The titles include men's singles (Fan Zhendong), women's singles (Chen Meng), men's doubles (Xu Xin/Fan Zhendong), and mixed doubles (Xu Xin/Liu Shiwen).Chen Meng from China holds her women's singles championship trophy of the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, December 15, 2019.Fan defeated his teammate Ma Long in men's singles final match 4-1 on Sunday to win his second championship of the annual tournament. It was also the 31st straight win of the 22-year-old this season.
Despite his age, Fan is already referred to as a "veteran" from time to time thanks to the rise of a new generation of table tennis players in China. He told CGTN that he considered such a comparison as the reason for him to work even harder before he can gain more confidence by competing with the younger teammates.
Fan also talked about his experience of participating in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as a substitute. He loved that period of time and wanted to do it again next year in Tokyo.Earlier on the day, Fan joined his compatriot Xu Xin to defeat Liao Cheng-Ting/Lin Yun-Ju from Chinese Taipei 3-1 in men's doubles final.This was China's first men's doubles title at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in eight years. As the team did not attach much importance to this contest, Chinese players kept watching their opponents bring home the trophy in the previous seven years – three went to South Korea, two went to Japan and the rest two were taken by Singapore.
When asked how he balances relations between career and family, Xu said that he is managing the two well, and his family offered great support to him when he's playing on behalf of his country. Xu also mentioned that many athletes would take their families along to attend the Olympics, and he wanted to try that as well in the future.China's first title at the tournament came from Xu and Liu Shiwen, who claimed victory over Japanese pair Jun Mizutani/Mima Ito in mixed doubles final match.
Golden might be the color for Liu in 2019. The former world No. 1 won two prestigious women's singles titles since the start of the year, one at the World Championships in April and the other at the World Cup in October."I have faced many challenges on my journey, including many things that I can't grasp. Rules change. My playing techniques change. I gradually felt distressed. I was very close to giving up. I think I was very lucky. I got the opportunity that I was waiting for, and it was a reward for my insistence, hard work and effort," said Liu to CGTN.