The career of Hugo Calderano has been an interesting journey with some recent ups and some painful downs in the past. To some extent, the Brazilian star has been lucky to represent the South American continent, since the wins on the continental level have been a solid boost for his World Rankings points.
In 2025, Calderano was finally able to break his spell of unsuccessful runs at the major tournaments, and he won the World Cup in Macao, displaying a truly consistent form in every game. However, the history shows that winning the World Cup isn’t really a guarantee for success at the most important tournament that everyone dreams of winning – the World Championships.
And it totally makes sense. It’s very difficult even for the best players to reach the peak of their powers twice in the same year. Usually, it happens just once a year. When the biggest tournament of the year is coming up, all the preparation process is set up to bring the best performance specifically at that time. That’s why the Chinese players can sometimes have disappointing games at pro tours or the World Cup, but then come up strong when it counts the most at the World Championships. This tournament matters the most.
Let’s look at the historical perspective of this topic in an infographic below.
The performance of the World Cup Winners at the World Table Tennis Championships of the same year.
As you can see, of the 20 World Cup winners, only 8 were able to win a medal at the singles event of the World Championships. Only two of them were non-Chinese players – Jörgen Persson and Zoran Primorac. Looking purely on numbers, Hugo Calderano has less than a 50% chance to keep up his impressive form and win his first medal at the WTTC.
In addition to this, the pressure levels will be much higher in Qatar, and the Chinese team will definitely do their homework to analyze Calderano’s game even more carefully to avoid the mistakes they had in Macao. The stakes at the World Championships are very high, and for the Chinese players, it’s traditionally a must-win mentality.
If Calderano can add another major accolade in Qatar, it will finally push his name into that list of all-time great players. Not on the same level as the World champions (unless he wins it), but at least Calderano could be recognized as a player who can actually win something big on the biggest stage. Considering his style of play, it might be one of the last great opportunities to strengthen his legacy and shine on the biggest stage.
Can Calderano do it and prove the statistics wrong? The question remains open until the end of this month.
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