Last year’s Tokyo Olympics, many people who didn’t pay much attention to sports also used the broadcast to cheer for the hard-working Taiwanese athletes. Among the competitions in Taiwan, billiards is regarded as an event that the Chinese people pay more attention to. Whether it is Zhuang Zhiyuan, the “godfather of billiards” who has been fighting for many years, or Lin Yunru, the “classmate Xiaolin” who broke into the semi-finals of the men’s singles, or won the bronze in the mixed doubles Zheng Yijing, the “Sister of Billiards”.
In fact, Taiwan has always been very competitive internationally in billiards. In addition to Zhuang Zhiyuan, who has participated in 5 Olympic Games, Lin Yunru is currently ranked 8th in the world. And before their two top men’s singles players, there was another one who was ranked No. 3 in the world, held a penhold grip and had a 184 cm tall figure rarely seen in Asian table tennis players. He was the “ghost pusher” Jiang Penglong.
Jiang Penglong, who was born in 1976, has shown a very high billiard talent since he was a child. Before graduating from elementary school, he won the three championships of the Liberty Cup, the Mandarin Cup, and the Chairman Cup. He became the most watched young player in Taiwan at that time. Therefore, it has also been recruited by coaches from all over the world. After thinking about it, he chose to enter the Tainan billiards training camp that trained Wu Wenjia, Taiwan’s highest-ranked men’s singles player in the world at that time. With talent and hard work, Jiang Penglong quickly became a national player at the age of 15.
In the 1991 French Open, he partnered with Xu Jing to win the silver medal in the mixed doubles event. After that, at the age of 18, he and his brother Wu Wenjia won the bronze medal in the men’s doubles event in the 1994 Asian Championships. In the same year, he also won the bronze medal with Xu Jing again. Competitive match won the silver medal in the Hiroshima Asian Games. Two years later, at the age of 20, he participated in the Atlanta Olympics and set foot on the Olympic stage for the first time, but finally stopped in the group stage.
In 1997, 21-year-old Jiang Penglong decided to go to Europe to participate in professional club competitions under the encouragement of his coaches and relatives. Both mentality and technique have improved a lot during this time. At that time, he partnered with Olympic gold medalist Chen Jing to win the bronze medal in mixed doubles at the World Table Tennis Championships. In 1999, he won two Open Men’s Singles Championships and reached the top four in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) year-end finals. , the world ranking came to No. 3, setting the best record in the history of Chinese billiards men’s singles players (after Zhuang Zhiyuan also tied this record in December 2003).
The following year, he won the men’s singles and men’s doubles gold medals in the Asian Table Tennis Championships. Unfortunately, he lost to the Chinese player Liu Guozheng in the top 16 of the Sydney Olympics and missed the medal. He played a masterpiece of his life in the game. The opponent he faced in this game was Liu Guoliang, the last champion and the first men’s singles player in Chinese history who has won Olympic, World Championships, and World Cup gold medals.
At that time, everyone believed that Liu Guoliang would definitely win this game, but Jiang Penglong chased back three games after losing one game first, and advanced to the semi-finals with a “reversal victory”. “It made the opponent shake his head in frustration many times. Although he lost to Wang Liqin, who was ranked No. 1 in the world at the time, in the semifinals and received a bronze medal, his amazing performance in the semifinals was enough to make him famous in the first battle, and he also won a bronze medal in the men’s doubles. It can be said that he has gained a lot from the tournament.
Jiang Penglong’s main style of play is the Japanese-style candy bar, and his special skill is called “ghost push and block”. The direction of the ball is too late to react.
However, after that, in order to check and balance the situation of China’s dominance, the International Billiard Association revised the billiard rules many times. Jiang Penglong is no exception. His world ranking dropped to No. 10 after 2004, and he was eliminated in the first round of the Athens Olympics that year.
In 2006, Jiang Penglong and Zhuang Zhiyuan, who had just entered their thirties, won the silver medal in the men’s doubles event in the Duha Asian Games. The following year, they won the men’s doubles bronze medal in the World Championships and Zhang Yanshu. This is also his fourth time in the event. medals. The subsequent 2008 Beijing Olympics was Jiang Penglong’s 4th and last time participating in the Olympics in his career. He participated in men’s singles and men’s team events.
In 2009, 33-year-old Jiang Penglong withdrew from the national team after winning the silver medal in the men’s doubles at the East Asian Games. However, he still appeared in domestic competitions, and in 2010 and 2011, he dominated the National Table Tennis Championship for two consecutive times. It was not until 2012 that he officially announced his retirement and ended his career as a player.
After retiring, Jiang Penglong became a coach. In addition to educating the grassroots in the billiards classroom he established, he also took over the post of coach of the national team. Last year’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic Men’s Team Competition and the current “Taiwan No. 1 Brother” Lin Yunru competed. You can see him on the sidelines. Recently, he was also invited to be the guest of the popular reality sports program “All-Star Games”. In the program, he and his junior Jiang Hongjie had a rare exhibition match.
Jiang Penglong once said that what he wants to do most now is to let the players he coaches be better than him one day. He also thinks for them from the perspective of players through his more than 20 years of player experience and strives for better opportunities for them. The training environment, I believe that whether it is his fans or students, he will never forget the wonderful games he left behind and his contribution to billiards!
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