By Sportswriter Su Bin
BEIJING, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- A fair play award was launched for table tennis players on a 45,000 US dollars fine paid by China's Olympic champion Zhang Jike, who won the men's World Cup in October but lost all the prize money for overzealous celebration.
After beating teammate Ma Long in a seven-game thriller, Zhang put his foot through two of the advertisement boards guarding the court, earning him an unprecedentedly hefty fine in table tennis history.
Zhang, who had avoided a penalty for ripping his shirt apart while celebrating the 2011 world championship victory, explained he was just letting off steam in the World Cup after a struggling year.
"I lost in Tokyo and missed singles matches in the Asian Games. People began to doubt me and I felt huge pressure," he said.
Zhang lost to Dimitrij Ovtcharov in China's victory over Germany in the world team championship final in May and sat out the Asian Games singles matches as the Chinese team decided to give more chances to youngsters.
For Zhang, being a "grand slam" winner of world championships, World Cup and Olympic singles titles isn't enough to secure his place in the Chinese national team.
"Nobody should rest on laurels," said Chinese head coach coach Liu Guoliang. "Players either move forward or backward."
Zhang proved himself as "Tibetan mastiff", as he is nicknamed by his supporters, and cleared doubts over his head in the World Cup. That might explained he got so pumped up with his big win.
"The ITTF encourages all players to show strong emotions when playing table tennis," International Table Tennis Federation president Thomas Weikert said. "Unfortunately Zhang Jike showed destructive and negative emotion after his men's World Cup victory, which left the competition jury no option, but to fine him or to disqualify him."
"We are glad that we kept his title, as it was a brilliant performance by the Olympic champion," Weikert added.
Zhang said that his loss would go to a good cause. "I am happy that the money will be offered to a fair play award. This will give a good example to the younger players."
Besides the moment of madness from Zhang, the World Cup will also be remembered as the first major international event using the new material ball.
Compared with the celluloid ball, the new material ball was made out of one single plastic piece, thus eliminating the seam once and for all. It also comes with a slight increase in diameter.
In the women's World Cup in October, which also used the plastic ball, Ding Ning trounced fellow Chinese and Olympic champion Li Xiaoxia 4-0.
China has started an intra-squad tournament to select representatives in the 2015 world championships. Liu Shiwen battled through a five-player field headed by Ding Ning to snatch the first ticket to the worlds.
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