The Chinese have been the most dominant players for the last 45 years and throughout Olympic competition. Since 1988, China has won 20 of the 24 gold medals awarded. At their home Games in 2008 they made a clean sweep of all four events. The only European Olympic gold medallist so far has been the legendary Swedish player Jan-Ove Waldner: nicknamed ‘the Mozart of Table Tennis’, Waldner won the men’s singles at Barcelona 1992.
TABLE TENNIS FORMAT
There are four Olympic table tennis competitions: men’s singles and teams and women’s singles and teams. In singles all events follow a knockout (single elimination) format with each match consisting of the best four out of seven games to at least 11 points, where the winner must win by at least two points. Players have two serves in a row, except when the points score reaches 10 all, after which the serve alternates each point at the end of each set the players will swap sides.
A team match at the Olympic competition is called a “contest”. Each contest consists of four singles matches and one doubles match. All matches in a contest are the best of five, with no other differences from men’s and women’s singles events. The teams competition is held in two stages. The first stage is group round robin; the second stage is knock-out. In the first stage, the 16 participating teams will be divided into four groups. The group round robin system will be used to decide the places in each group. In the second stage, the winning teams of each group shall play-off, in a knockout semi-final format for the gold and silver medals. The second placed teams of each group and the semi-final contest losers shall play-off for the bronze medal.
QUALIFICATION AND SELECTION
Table tennis athletes will qualify for the Olympic Games through the ITTF World Ranking, Continental qualification and the Final World Qualification event.
The ITTF World Ranking published following the 2011 World Championships determined the first 28 athletes to qualify. The next 40 athletes to qualify will be determined by the continental qualifications.
For Australian athletes, continental qualification took place in Melbourne at the 2012 Oceania Olympic Qualification Tournament in March 2012. Any athlete who qualifies a singles quota place will take that place. It is anticipated that a further two Australian athletes (one female and one male) will be nominated for selection at the conclusion of the Final World Olympic Qualification Tournament in May.
For all the Nomination and Selection documentation click here>>>
AUSTRALIAN OLYMPIC HISTORY
Australia has been represented at every Olympic Games since the sport began in 1988 but has never won a table tennis medal in Olympic competition. At Sydney 2000 in front of a home crowd, Australia’s Miao Miao and Shirley Zhou combined in the women’s doubles to place fifth out of 34 teams, Australia’s best performed result in Olympic table tennis.
To read more about Australia’s Olympic table tennis history, click here>>>