The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) has a special World Cup competition which invites the best players from each regional confederation, the top players from the world-ranking list and the current World Champion and the last World Cup winner.
That means the entire tournament includes just 20 players; the top entries:
∙ Yuling Zhu (CHN: 1) ~ 2017 World Cup Champion; 2018 World Champs silver medalist
∙ Ning Ding (CHN: 6) ~ 2011-15-17 World Champion
∙ Miu Hirano (JPN: 9) ~ 2016 World Cup Champion; 2017 World Champs bronze medalist
∙ I-Ching Cheng (TPE: 8) ~ 2016 World Cup silver medalist
∙ Kasumi Ishikawa (JPN: 4) ~ 2015 World Cup silver medalist; 2014 World Cup bronze medalist
There is one American entry; Yue Wu, who finished second in the Pan Am Cup competition.
The prize money is good: $60,000-40,000-20,000-14,000 for places 1-4; $10,000 for places 5-8; $7,000 for placers 9-16 and $5,000 for places 17-20. By the way, there’s a 20% deduction for Chinese taxes!
The event takes place at the Sichuan Province Gymnasium in Chengdu (CHN) and is sponsored by Uncle Pop, a Chinese snack food company, which makes crackers, potato chips, waffles, egg rolls, biscuits and the like.
The women’s World Cup started in 1996 and China has completely dominated the event, winning 20 of the 21 editions, with Yuling Zhu winning in 2017. Japan’s Miu Hirano is the only non-Chinese to win the event, in 2016. A Chinese players has also won 15 of the 21 silver medals in the event!
Look for results here.
