2009 Asia versus Europe Challenge Videos

johnny89atc wrote: theman wrote: i was bout to celebrate when kreanga was leading int eh 5th, becuase that would mean its his first win against ma lin. And they've played over 10 times in their career, kreanga has yet to snag a win He had beaten Ma Lin once, but not in an ITTF tournament. It was a small tournament and they played just for money if I remember correctly and that tournament didn't affect their rankings...

thanks for the info, do you know what tournament that kreanga beat ma lin in?

why is JOO wearing a chinese t - shirt ??? 

ohh ok ..........but he dint have to wear chinese though lol 

Is there a link to a page with the results?

Cyrilix wrote: amateur wrote: MildSeven wrote: I found the commentary for the Ma Lin / Kreanga match offensive. What did they say? I suspect he's referring to the part where the female commentator asks (and I'm translating here): "Do you think Kreanga would have better results had he won the tournaments where he had gotten 2nd place (silver medal)? Do you think that would've boosted his confidence and ability?" The reply was: "I think that he would be a bit better, but when compared to the other world champions like Boll and Samsonov (this is referring to world championships and world cup tournaments), he still lacks some fundamental ability. Boll and Samsonov are on the level of the rest of the Chinese, but although Kreanga has some excellent strengths (obviously referring to his power and speed with the backhand), compared to Boll and Samsonov, he has more obvious weaknesses in his game, such as his short game (and something else I'm not too sure how to interpret, but it has to do with the forehand)." In short, it's the truth, but some people don't like being pointed out the truth. Boll and Samsonov are both better all-round players at a higher level of skill. Another thing that was said was (and I'm paraphrasing here), is that it's unfortunate that Boll couldn't attend the event since he's a major representative of Europe's table tennis strength, and that they believe that while Boll has healed his injury, he is not attending and taking it easy because they don't want to stimulate his injury (to that effect). She says that Chinese players don't seem to act the same way. As soon as they heal, they're back playing. They make this distinction with respect to European and Chinese players. I'm a bit more compassionate with the Europeans on this one, however, I think that the commentators are actually very correct in their analysis, since Boll seems to have been playing games elsewhere in Europe, but not coming to the international competitions (which is a real shame, but ultimately, up to him). Edit: Just finished watching it. Very nice game. Good job to Kreanga for coming so close to winning. I think he should be happy that he played such a great game, even if it didn't go his way.

about boll...  last month on his blog he made a post where he said that he was going to have to start setting his priorities as far as his TT schedule was concerned.  and then he basically implied that his focus from now on was gonna be on the german and champions leagues.

so that tells me one thing for sure--he has NOT healed his injury. y'know what, i have the same thing he has and i can tell you from experience, once you screw up your back, that's it, you're done.  there is no cure--surgery absolutely doesn't work and chiropractic only offers temporary pain relief.  it always comes back (depending on the chiropractor, and, as with anything else, you can safely expect that most of them are lousy).

i watched the euro championships this past weekend and saw how he played against maze.  the commentators said that that was the 1st (and 2nd) time maze has beaten boll in the past 9 yrs!!  you can clearly see that boll has a problem moving from left to right (to his backhand and that's where maze won a lot of his points), which to me says that he's feeling pain (or at least tightness) in the lower right part of his back.  you also can see that he wasn't moving freely--he appeared to be moving gingerly as if he was afraid that if he made too quick a movement he would hurt himself again.  what happens is that you hear (and feel) a snap and then you feel excruciating pain in the lower back, so bad that you can barely walk.

when you feel pain like that for awhile, once it goes away, you get afraid to do any quick movements for fear that your back will snap again, so it definitely affects your game even if at present you're not hurting.

I believe when Boll was playing Maze, he fell down again. Why does he keep doing that? He has a knack for trying to save the ball and falling down in the process.