Fang Bo Returns Through Qualifying: China's Squad for the WTT Zagreb Contender
Fang Bo Returns Through Qualifying: China’s Squad for the WTT Zagreb Contender
With one day to go, former national team player and world champion Fang Bo will represent Kazakhstan at the 2026 WTT Zagreb Contender!
The WTT series is in full swing with no sign of slowing. With the just-concluded WTT Skopje Contender seeing Darko Jorgic and Satsuki Odo take the men’s and women’s singles titles, the world’s top players now gather in Croatia: qualifying for the WTT Zagreb Contender 2026 begins this Tuesday (June 9-14).
China’s entry list:
Men’s singles main draw: Lin Shidong, Wen Ruibo, Xiang Peng, Chen Yuanyu, Chen Junsong;
Women’s singles main draw: Chen Yi, Qin Yuxuan, He Zhuojia;
Men’s singles qualifying: Huang Youzheng, Xue Fei, Yuan Licen, Li Tianyang;
Women’s singles qualifying: Zong Geman, Fan Shuhan, Yang Yiyun, Wang Xiaotong, Xu Yi, Zhu Ziyu, Han Feier, Zhu Sibing.
The Zagreb Arena will serve up a table tennis feast on the Mediterranean coast over the next six days. The field is so star-studded that players such as Park Ganghyeon, Quadri Aruna, Adrien Rassenfosse, Yeh Yi-Tian and Maria Xiao, all of whom entered the main draw directly in Skopje, must start from qualifying here in Zagreb.
The WTT Zagreb Contender 2026 opens with two days of qualifying, and one much-anticipated entrant is Fang Bo. A table tennis legend, Fang Bo retired in 2021 but announced his comeback earlier this year, and will make his WTT debut in Zagreb.
However, Fang Bo will face very stiff competition: of the 16 seeds in men’s singles qualifying, 14 are ranked in the world’s top 100.
Korea’s Park Ganghyeon, on the strength of his round-of-16 run in Skopje, is the top seed in men’s singles qualifying.
Aruna, who beat Flavien Coton in a five-game battle in the round of 32 at the previous stop in North Macedonia, is the No. 2 qualifying seed here.
Hong Kong, China’s Wong Chun Ting is the No. 3 qualifying seed; he won the men’s doubles title in Zagreb last year and now hopes to leave his mark in singles too.
The women’s side is even more competitive, with 27 top-100 players fighting for main-draw places.
In addition to the aforementioned Yeh Yi-Tian and Maria Xiao, Japan’s Saki Shibata will look to come through qualifying and reach the round of 16 at Contender level for the first time (she previously reached the quarterfinals at the 2026 WTT Doha Star Contender).
Indian table tennis legend Manika Batra is another player hoping to build momentum through qualifying and go deep into the main draw. Batra’s last WTT-series appearance was at the 2026 WTT Lagos Contender, where she reached the round of 16 in women’s singles and the quarterfinals in both doubles events.
Original report by Hu Qingyuan, Ping Pang Wang