Tomokazu Harimoto

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Tomokazu Harimoto Table tennis player
Tomokazu Harimoto
Tomokazu Harimoto (German Open 2017)
Nation: JapanJapan Japan
Date of birth: June 27, 2003
Place of birth: Sendai
Playing hand: right
How to play: Shakehand
Current world rankings : 4 (April 2020) Template: Infobox table tennis player / maintenance / local value
Best world ranking : 3 (Jan. 2019)

Tomokazu Harimoto ( Japanese 張 本 智 和 , Harimoto Tomokazu ; born June 27, 2003 in Sendai , Miyagi Prefecture ) is a Japanese table tennis player of Chinese descent. In the table tennis scene he is regarded as a child prodigy, talent of the century or, in Japan, also as a "monster" ( 怪物kaibutsu ), because he has already achieved successes that only significantly older players have achieved so far. In Germany, Harimoto became known to a wider public by reporting on his appearances at the 2017 World Cup in Düsseldorf. Among other things, he won the World Tour Grand Finals in 2018 and reached 3rd place in the world rankings at the age of 15.

Career

Tomokazu Harimoto started playing table tennis when he was 2 years old. He has competed internationally since 2014 and was able to beat two top 100 players at the beginning of 2015. In October 2015, he drew attention to himself when he defeated Tan Ruiwu , who is 72nd in the world rankings, at the Polish Open at the age of 12, making him the youngest player in history to reach the main round of a World Tour tournament. There he met the reigning world champion Ma Long and was eliminated. At that time, he said he was training nine hours a day. He achieved further victories against some of the significantly higher placed players at the Slovenia, Japan and Korea Open in June 2016. Still 12 years old, he made it into the quarter-finals of a World Tour tournament in Slovenia as the youngest player to date and won gold in Japan in the U21 competition. As a result, he made up over 100 places in the world rankings and reached 63rd place in July at the age of 13; in the U18 list he even moved up to first place. At the youth world championships, his victory in singles made him the youngest youth world champion of all time and also won gold with the team and silver in doubles.

By reaching the final at the Indian Open at the age of 13, he set another record and won his first World Tour medal in the adult category. In particular, he also took part in the 2017 World Championships in May / June, where he defeated, among other things, the world number sixth Jun Mizutani and reached the quarter-finals, which he lost to Xu Xin . At the China Open he beat other top players with Vladimir Samsonov and Kōki Niwa , in doubles with Yūto Kizukuri he made it to the final. In the world rankings he moved from 69th to 18th place within two months. With his final victory over Timo Boll at the Czech Open 2017, he became the youngest winner of a World Tour individual competition. He also qualified for the Grand Finals , in which he was defeated 3: 4 in the singles quarterfinals Dimitrij Ovtcharov and in the first doubles game to the eventual winners Masataka Morizono / Yūya Ōshima 2: 3. At the Japanese championship in January 2018, he defeated Jun Mizutani in the final, making him the youngest player to win the individual title. In April he took part in the Asian Cup for the first time, where he beat Chuang Chih-Yuan and world number one and runner-up Fan Zhendong in the group stage . In the quarterfinals he lost to Jeong Sang-eun and was fifth after winning over Wong Chun Ting and Kōki Niwa. At the 2018 World Cup , he was part of the Japanese team that started as the reigning runner-up, but surprisingly lost to England in the group stage and South Korea in the quarter-finals and was eliminated without a medal.

In May he reached a place in the top 10 for the first time, in June he won the Japan Open after knocking out the reigning world champion Ma Long. In his first participation in the World Cup , he reached the quarter-finals, at the Grand Finals at the end of 2018 he set a new record by becoming the youngest player in history to win the individual title, making him world number 3 in January. At the 2019 World Cup he made it to the round of 16, at the World Cup in November / December he beat world champion Ma Long in the semifinals and won silver after a final defeat against Fan Zhendong. In individual, he was able to qualify again for the Grand Finals , where he was eliminated in the quarterfinals after match points were awarded against Xu Xin.

Personal

Harimoto's parents are former Chinese (youth) national players. His father Zhang Yu ( 張 宇 , today: Yu Harimoto ( 張 本 宇 )) and his mother Zhang Ling ( 張 凌 ) emigrated to Japan five years before their son was born to work as a table tennis coach. Harimoto was born in Sendai as Zhang Zhihe ( 張 智 和 ). With the Japanese citizenship he also got his Japanese name 張 本 智 和 . His younger sister Miwa ( 張 本 美 和 ; * 2008) also plays table tennis successfully and won the Japanese championships in her age group in 2015.

Results from the ITTF database

Association event year place country singles Double Mixed team U-21
JPN Asian Cup 2019 Yokohama JPN 4th Place
JPN Asian Cup 2018 Yokohama JPN 5th place
JPN Asian Championship 2019 Yogyakarta IDN Semifinals Semifinals
JPN Asian Championship 2017 Wuxi CHN last 32 Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2020 Budapest HUN gold
JPN ITTF World Tour 2019 Linz CZE last 16 Agony gold
JPN ITTF World Tour 2019 Panagyurishte BUL gold Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2019 Sapporo JPN last 32 silver
JPN ITTF World Tour 2019 Hong Kong HKG silver last 16
JPN ITTF World Tour 2019 Shenzhen CHN Semifinals Quarter finals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2018 Olomouc CZE Semifinals Quarter finals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2018 Panagyurishte BUL Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2018 Geelong OUT Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2018 Kitakyushu JPN gold Quarter finals Quarter finals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2018 Bremen GER last 32 Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2017 Magdeburg GER last 32 silver
JPN ITTF World Tour 2017 Olomouc CZE gold
JPN ITTF World Tour 2017 Cheng you CHN Semifinals silver
JPN ITTF World Tour 2017 New Delhi IND silver Semifinals
JPN ITTF World Tour 2016 Tokyo JPN Agony gold
JPN ITTF World Tour Grand Finals 2019 Zhengzhou CHN Quarter finals
JPN ITTF World Tour Grand Finals 2018 Incheon COR gold
JPN ITTF World Tour Grand Finals 2017 Astana KAZ Quarter finals Quarter finals
JPN World Championship 2019 Budapest HUN last 16 last 16
JPN World Championship 2018 Halmstad SWE Quarter finals
JPN World Championship 2017 Dusseldorf GER Quarter finals
JPN World cup 2019 Cheng you JPN silver
JPN World cup 2018 Paris FRA Quarter finals
JPN World Team Cup 2019 Tokyo JPN Semifinals
JPN Youth World Championship 2016 Cape Town RSA gold silver gold

Web links

Commons : Tomokazu Harimoto  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Table tennis child prodigy Harimoto - "That's a bit sick" (accessed June 3, 2017)
  2. ↑ a b They call him a child prodigy. sueddeutsche.de, June 5, 2017, accessed June 5, 2017 .
  3. ↑ World Cup sensation: 13-year-old Japanese shocked favorites. waz.de, June 1, 2017, accessed on May 19, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c 張 本 智 和 の 両 親 は 中国 人？ 元 プ ロ？ 国籍？ 妹？ 雄 叫 び チ ョ レ イ の 意味 は？ . (No longer available online.) In: Vous et conversation. June 23, 2017, archived from the original on September 9, 2017 ; Retrieved July 30, 2017 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / conversation.tokyo
  5. ↑ a b c Youth World Cup: Tomokazu Harimoto youngest winner of all time! mytischtennis.de, December 8, 2016, accessed on December 13, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Sensational: 11-year-old beats two top 100 players! mytischtennis.de, February 21, 2015, accessed on December 13, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Harimoto becomes youngest to reach main draw at 12. reuters.com, October 23, 2015, accessed on May 19, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Harimoto youngest major round participant in history. mytischtennis.de, October 23, 2015, accessed on June 6, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Japan Open: Twelve-year-old Japanese chasing records. mytischtennis.de, June 16, 2016, accessed on December 13, 2016 .
  10. ↑ ITTF WORLD TOUR: Harimoto's record for the ages. tt-news.de, accessed on December 13, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Harimoto continues to hunt for records: At 13 years old in the final! mytischtennis.de, February 19, 2017, accessed on February 19, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Sensation: 13-year-old Harimoto defeats Jun Mizutani! mytischtennis.de, June 1, 2017, accessed June 1, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Record breaker, Tomokazu Harimoto, youngest ever. ittf.com, August 27, 2017, accessed August 27, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Tomokazu Harimoto youngest Japanese champion of all time. tt-news.de, accessed on January 25, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Asian Cup: Harimoto wins against Fan Zhendong! mytischtennis.de, April 6, 2018, accessed on April 8, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Milestones: Tomokazu Harimoto's way into the top 10. mytischtennis.de, May 11, 2018, accessed on May 13, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Harimoto beats top Chinese and wins Japan Open. mytischtennis.de, June 10, 2018, accessed on June 10, 2018 .
  18. ↑ 15 years, 172 days: Youngest Grand Finals winner of all time! mytischtennis.de, December 16, 2018, accessed on December 16, 2018 .
  19. ↑ World Cup: Fan Zhendong defends title, Ma Long only fourth. mytischtennis.de, December 1, 2019, accessed on December 4, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Zhengzhou Review: Xu Xin escapes, heartbreak for defending champion. ittf.com, December 13, 2019, accessed March 20, 2020 .
  21. ↑ 張 本 美 和 . Butterfly, accessed July 30, 2017 (Japanese).
personal data
SURNAME Harimoto, Tomokazu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 張 本 智 和 (Japanese); Zhang Zhihe (maiden name); 張智 和 (Chinese, maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese table tennis player
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 2003