OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Interesting interview with LGL:



What does he mean by "Ito Has it Better because She's a Raw-Pips Player"?

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"Raw" means "uncooked" pips.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=23455&hilit=uncooked

Thanks shaolinTT

So why is it 'better' for Ito?

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I think this is what LGL means:
Internal competition is fierce to earn a spot for the world championship. It is all double inverted vs double inverted, pretty well same style of play. Maybe they should focus on playing against and winning against player of a different style (outside the CNT), be it Ito or Harimoto. (Remember Wang Jianjun switched to JPen, so the CNT could practice with him, and learn how to beat a player like Ryu Seung-min from South Korea?)

I interpreted his remarks similarly: since Mima Ito has both a unique playstyle (she's the only high-level short pips player the Japanese women's team has) and has had some unique success in competition against the CNT lately, it's clear (in LGL's view) the Japanese will send her to the Olympics, and as a result some pressure is off of her. Same deal with Harimoto on the men's side. This also affects the team dynamics wrt. the jockeying for position in order to get a ticket, so to speak - nobody needs to be bitter rivals with the players who are shoe-ins, so they can have more of a rah-rah attitude towards them and make them a sort of a nucleus of team spirit.

The Chinese, on the other hand, only really have double-inverted attackers in the running and the skill level gap is very tight among the top players, so it's everybody vs. everybody, which has some downsides.



To me, it's weird to hear LGL talk like that. I've seen video of one of his speeches to the men's team from a year or two ago where he was giving a sort of debriefing after a tournament (I think Marvelous Twelve) telling players they needed to take away somebody else's ticket in order to go themselves, and that he was so disappointed in some of them wrt. a perceived lack of competitive spirit that they should "go play on the B team or the women's team" if they couldn't play with fire. I don't see how you can purposely cultivate a dog-eat-dog environment like that and then sort of decry it. But hey, I'm not the Grand Slam winner who's coached the team to a zillion WTTC, WC and Olympic golds so what do I know

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LGL is one of the many "Vice-Presidents" of TT. But I think in this case he is being allowed to have limited contact with the CNT members. Winnie The Pooh of China is still controlling and pulling a lot of strings in the background. For all we know, LGL is still prevented from developing the CNT directly.

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I suspect "raw" rubber is older technology, from the 1960s and 70s perhaps - possibly a lesser degree of vulcanization, or a different method of vulcanization, or a different formulation of topsheet rubber. The way you can tell is if you leave the sheet on the blade for 5 or 10 years, the sheet will "liquefy" and make a mess - if the bat is in among other bats, you'll have bats stuck together. What rubbers use this old technology? I suspect 999 - both Globe and 999 Corp. And those old sheets of Yung mushroom pips rubber Eacheng sells. I've had both liquefy on me. 999 is known for being slow and sticky, I suspect it owes its tack to the rubber rather than to a surface treatment with glue, which I think is applied to other tacky sheets to make them tacky.

I doubt Moristo SP uses this old technology - maybe Liu was using it as a simile. Maybe it plays like the old "raw" pips. Or maybe the subtitles are wrong... Maybe he just meant "pips out" or "short pips".

Iskandar