Wang Manyu Takes Asian Games Gold as Sun Yingsha Says She May Not Last to the Next Games
Wang Manyu beat Sun Yingsha 4–2 in Nagoya for her second Asian Games women's singles title, China's eighth in a row — and Sun's press-conference admission that the next Games may fall outside her career turned a routine all-Chinese final into a reflection on how little time the country's table tennis stars actually get.
Wang Manyu beat her teammate Sun Yingsha 4–2 (11–8, 11–9, 11–13, 11–9, 4–11, 15–13) in the women's singles final at the Nagoya Asian Games on Sunday night, taking the title she also won in Jakarta in 2018 and keeping China's streak — now eight consecutive Asian Games golds in the event — intact. The all-Chinese final had been settled a day earlier, when both women beat Japanese opponents in the semi-finals to guarantee the gold-and-silver sweep.
The match was as tight as an intra-squad fixture usually is. Sun, who had dispatched Hina Hayata 4–1 in the semis, took the third game 13–11 and the fifth 11–4 to halve the deficit each time, and Wang closed the sixth 15–13 after deucing late. A clip of the final rallies posted by CCTV News drew more than 60,000 likes within hours — though the clip that carried the evening's real weight came later, from the mixed zone.
Asked about the loss, Sun congratulated Wang, blamed the start — "if I had taken the first or second game, the match might have looked very different" — and admitted her conditioning is still catching up after an injury-interrupted year of patchy training. Then came the line that trended: the next Asian Games, she noted, is five years away, the Olympic Council having pushed it from 2030 to 2031. "Five years is a bit long," she said. "I don't think I'll make it." To another reporter she put it more plainly: this may be her last Asian Games, "so I treasure every match."
The candor landed because it puts a number on something Chinese table tennis usually leaves unsaid: careers that outrun the gaps between Games by less than fans assume. The mixed doubles final days earlier — where Sun and Wang Chuqin lost 0–4 to Lin Shidong and Kuai Man — had already been framed by the pair's own captain as a silver "held together" by two players who may not share a stage much longer.
Wang, for her part, was asked about the woman she had just beaten and produced the night's second trending moment: "Sha Sha has a lot of things worth learning from" (莎莎有很多地方值得我学习). In the comments, the winner's graciousness read as tribute between the two people who know each other's games best.
The women's sweep restores an aura that a rocky Nagoya otherwise punctured — the men's doubles collapse, the men's singles shock exit. With 2031 now the target, Sun's arithmetic is the story's open question: whether the sport's biggest name will still be standing when the Asian Games come round again. By her own estimate, probably not.