Table tennis: China's Wang, Sun pull out of WTT Champions Montpellier

Beijing (China), Oct 21 (IANS) The World Table Tennis (WTT) announced on Tuesday that six players, including World No. 1s Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha of China, have withdrawn from next week's WTT Champions Montpellier.

The withdrawing players include Wang, Sun, Lin Shidong, Liang Jingkun, and Wang Manyu, the key players that powered China to both men's and women's team titles at the recently concluded ITTF-ATTU 28th Asian Table Tennis Team Championships in Bhubaneswar, India, and Japan's Shunsuke Togami.

The WTT also announced the replacements, with fellow Chinese Wen Ruibo replacing Liang in the men's singles. The WTT Champions Montpellier will take place from October 28 to November 2, reports Xinhua.

The WTT event in Montpellier, followed by Frankfurt, to be held back-to-back, is part of the European leg of the WTT Series. The Montlellier event will be followed by WTT Champions Frankfurt 2025 from November 4–9.

This double bill marks the final WTT Champions sprint of the season, where world ranking points, pride, and legacies collide. Every point banked across the WTT Series matters, as the sport’s biggest names fight to turn their season’s work into qualification for WTT Finals Hong Kong 2025, chasing momentum, glory, and the right to finish their year on top.

From the heart of southern France, WTT Champions Montpellier 2025 returns to the Sud de France Arena, a venue that bleeds atmosphere and energy. France’s fastest-rising stars, Felix Lebrun and Alexis Lebrun, will lead the home charge alongside Simon Gauzy, the nation’s established icon.

Jia Nan Yuan and Prithika Pavade, the young prodigies redefining the next generation, will headline a star-studded field, all ready to make Montpellier their proving ground.

Montpellier has quickly become the WTT Series stop fans look forward to; a place where every rally crackles, every point feels personal, and the crowd, loud, proud, and unmistakably French, turns every match into theatre.

--IANS

bsk/