Dear Table Tennis lovers,
What an amazing week in Budapest. For the new ITTF – from Halmstad to Budapest, it was “Game on, round 2”. The ITTF, together with the Hungarian Table Tennis Association, showed the world that great things can be achieved with a professional operation. The moves to become a more professional and modern commercial sport are now starting to shine, and we will only see even better things in the future after the wonderful decisions made in Budapest. It is not always easy to achieve change, but we knew this was not a game for “weak hearted fools”.
The performance of the Chinese team was simply amazing and won the 5 gold medals on offer in Budapest, “they play the sport like piper plays the flute”. Liu Guoliang will be smiling and hopefully move his thinking now on how to grow the sport together with the new ITTF. Saying that, there was a feeling of change in the international table tennis landscape emerging – at least on the men’s side. Ma Long is a superstar and maybe soon becomes the best ever, Tokyo is maybe needed to confirm that. But it was not all about China. A stunning silver result to Sweden’s Mattias Falck in the Men’s Singles event strikes a question – is Sweden coming back as a power? And not to forget the amazing run of the Korean teenager An Jaehyun who had fought his way into the semi-finals from the qualification rounds. And what about Spain and Romania in the Men’s Doubles – could anyone have ever predicted that? It was so close for Portugal, settling for a bronze medal in Budapest.
On the Women’s side, it was still largely dominated by China, with Japan continuing to knock on the door. Our sport needs to look at this imbalance to get more nations in Women’s table tennis at the highest level, it’s now becoming a serious issue. That said, Liu Shiwen’s stunning run from almost being out in recent years was one for the ages. In Tokyo, we will play the Mixed Doubles event for the first time at the Olympic Games, and we saw in Halmstad the importance as the teams try to prepare themselves. Whilst China and Japan dominated, the German team reminded us that they are still very much a threat.
Off the table, the 2019 World Championships is also a wonderful success, expected to be the most followed and reported table tennis event in history. The global media coverage will be huge simply due to the spread of success at the tournament, as well as the amazing amount of content the ITTF media team has been producing.
Some of the reforms are starting to pay off also. After the changes to expand the World Championships in Halmstad, the hosting of the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships Finals was awarded to Houston, USA. This was a historic moment for the ITTF because it meant that the World Championships will be hosted in the USA for the first time, and it will be the first time our event will be hosted outside of Asia or Europe since 1939 when the event was held in Cairo, Egypt. It is really something to be proud about. It will also be 50 years of Ping-Pong diplomacy when table tennis helped build relations between China and the USA – so I wonder if we will be able to get the leader of both countries to attend the Championships, at least we should try.
The 2022 event was awarded to Chengdu, China and whilst the World Championships have been hosted in China 5 times previously, it will be the first time to be held in Chengdu. It was also for the first time there was a competition in the number of bids, and Chengdu had to fight off serious challenge from Lisbon, Portugal and Kitakyshu, Japan for the hosting rights. All of this was only possible due to the reforms made and whilst some feel disenfranchised by these reforms, we will promise to find ways to find new benefits for all our members for supporting us on these vital and crucial decisions, especially related to the new World Championships. There were numerous other changes and in fact every proposition that the ITTF Executive committee put forward passed, that is a sign of strength that is undeniable, we are indebted to our membership for giving us time and trust.
And now we go home to prepare for the 2020 World Championships to be held in Busan next year. As we leave, we look forward for the rest of the year to achieve what we believe will be the biggest success for our sport with a new commercial future for the ITTF to start in 2021, which we must prepare now.
There are too many persons to thank – Firstly thank you Budapest and the Hungary Table Tennis Association for an amazing Job, Roland Natran and Gabor Felegyi, you are both superstars and we hope that you will continue to help table tennis on an international level. All ITTF officials who work tirelessly as volunteers, and especially the ITTF staff and everyone involved in the event whom I hope will take some rest after assisting to deliver an amazing, jam packed event.
And to end, I hope we learnt and to quote from the official song:
“Friends will be Friends, when the game will end, I will be there for you and you will be there me, and we’ll be friends”.