China's table tennis sensation Wang Hao will face big challenges from both teammates and European rivals to defend the yearend honor, while newly-crowned Olympic champion Ryu Seung Min will miss the ITTF Pro Tour grand final slated for Friday.

Ryu, the top-placed South Korean on the world rankings who has been playing in the Chinese super league after the Olympics, withdrew from the tournament due to an injury sustained in training, and is expected to be out of action for 10 days before joining Swedish "Grand Slam" winner Jan-Ove Waldner and other non-Chinese paddlers next Tuesday in Changsha for a "World vs China" challenge.

The Olympic silver medalist Wang, beaten by Ryu in the Olympic men's singles final last August in Athens, has been drawn into theupper zone of the tournament accompanying fellow Chinese Wang Liqin, Kong Linghui and Chen Qi.

Triple World Cup holder Ma Lin was left as the sole Chinese in the lower half, together with Swedish veteran Peter Karlsson, German talent Timo Boll and "Oriental Express" Chuan Chih-Yuan, who will face Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus in the first round.

Wang, 21, taking the top spot on the latest ITTF world rankings from compatriot Wang Liqin a week ago, meets former World Cup runner-up Kalinikos Kreanga in the first round of the 240,000 US dollars tournament.

The men's and women's singles winners will pocket 38,000 and 26,000 dollars respectively and drive home a Volkswagen Beatle each as additional rewards.

The 10th-ranked Greek, who lost to Ma Lin at the singles final of the 2003 World Cup, failed to reach the last 16 at the Athens Olympic Games despite the great support from the home crowd.

Chinese upstart Chen Qi, the Olympic men's doubles gold medalist whose giant-killing run in 2003 brought down then world number one Boll and Chinese Taipei's Chuan, is expected to give a difficult time to Leung Chu Yan of Hong Kong, China.

Former Olympic champions Kong Linghui and Wang Liqin, who partnered with Yan Sen to lift the doubles crown in Sydney four years ago, will take on reigning world champion Werner Schlager and all-time Belgium great Jean Michel Saive respectively en routeto the men's singles quarter-finals.

In the women's table, Europeans see bigger chances here versus Asians than last year as five rather than two out of the total 16 female player vying for the yearending event.

Fifth seed Tamara Boros, ranked 4th, was only the fourth European in three decades to make the women's singles semi-finals in last year's world championships in Paris and will fight againstGermany's Kristin Silbereisen in the first round to down Europe tofour in the quarter-finals, if not less.

World number one Zhang Yining heads the four-member Chinese women's team to made it to the grand finals.

The 22-year-old new queen in table tennis world, who took the place of Wang Nan by winning China's 100th Olympic gold medal, mayhope an easy run with a first round clash against Belarus' Viktoria Pavlovich, while defending champion Niu Jianfeng will fight lonely to make it through for an expected meeting with Zhang,Wang, or Guoyue in the women's singles final.

Ma Lin and Chen Qi, the Olympic winning pair who beat Li Ching and Ko Lai Chak from Hong Kong to the silver, are seeded top in the men's doubles and Kong Linghui/Wang Hao, who were ousted from the first round of Olympics, are the second seeds.

In the women's doubles, China's Guo Yue and Niu Jianfeng, the Olympic bronze medalists, and Olympic doubles champions Wang Nan and Zhang Yining are odds-on favorites for the championship final.

Source: Xinhua