Liu Guoliang needs to chill. In 2018, China's legendary player and coach was elected president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association (CTTA). On top of the routine business of maintaining his team's global dominance, Liu has been especially busy as of late. In June, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) tapped Liu to head its new commercial venture, World Table Tennis (WTT). As chair of the WTT council, Liu will oversee efforts to expand the global visibility and commercial viability of the sport with a lucrative new "Grand Smash" tournament series. While that would plenty to keep most people busy, Liu is not most people. Normally, the Chinese team would be dominating the Olympics, if 2020 had anything to do with normal. With the games delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this month the CTTA staged an elaborate "pretend Olympics," simulating next year's scheduled events as closely as possible. Now, Liu has concocted even more work for himself. The CTTA has announced the formation of two national youth teams by the end of the year. One is for players age 11-14, and another for the 7-10 age range. A panel of coaches and other experts will cull 32 girls and 32 boys for each team from a series of provincial tournaments. Team members will undergo at least two yearly training sessions, and will have the opportunity to compete in international tournaments. China already possesses the world's best training infrastructure, not to mention a pool of 1.4 billion people from which to draw. Nonetheless, a singularly driven character such as Liu will always see room for improvement. In this instance, the former Olympic and world champion Liu saw a need to improve his nation's youth development program, so he pulled an Nike and just did it. Now, China's global dominance is assured at every level throughout the juniors and into the big leagues. For his own health and sanity, we hope no one tells Liu that people from other countries occasionally win on the newly formed "World Veterans Tour" for players 40 and over. He would likely be compelled to form a national seniors team to ensure international hegemony at every level. Of course, now that Liu Guoliang is eligible to compete in the "40 and better" event, he could simply dust off his old penhold combination racket and take matters into his own hands. Or he could try an even more radical approach to it all and just, you know, chill.

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