At this point, I'm willing to buy into the conspiracy theory that Japan was fucking around with the arena to try to win, which the Chinese coach complained about. (In reality, I can't tell if he's trying to deflect blame or if there really is something weird about the arena that's throwing the players off.)
To be more objective about things, there were two new rule changes that really affected the Chinese athletes: 1) no blowing on the ball; 2) no touching the table during down time. The Chinese athletes use these two methods to de-stress and I think the sudden removal of these relaxation methods really fucked with their mental state.
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Date: 2021-07-26 18:42 (UTC)At this point, I'm willing to buy into the conspiracy theory that Japan was fucking around with the arena to try to win, which the Chinese coach complained about. (In reality, I can't tell if he's trying to deflect blame or if there really is something weird about the arena that's throwing the players off.)
To be more objective about things, there were two new rule changes that really affected the Chinese athletes: 1) no blowing on the ball; 2) no touching the table during down time. The Chinese athletes use these two methods to de-stress and I think the sudden removal of these relaxation methods really fucked with their mental state.