Dear Table Tennis Family,
First and foremost, we hope everyone is safe and well!
As we all know, COVID-19 has spread worldwide becoming recently a global pandemic. Countries like the United States of America, Italy or Spain are now surpassing largely the initial figures we saw in other countries, and unfortunately the effects of the virus are now seen in almost every corner of the planet.
Governments around the world are implementing more and more measures of restriction in an attempt to control the spread of the pandemic: movement limitations at national and international levels, airlines reducing drastically their services, almost the whole world has been affected in some shape or form.
Sports have not been oblivious to this, and table tennis is not an exception. Many of our events were also suspended in order to best protect the health and safety of our players, officials, fans and the rest of the table tennis community.
The ITTF is dedicated to support and provide assistance to all our member associations to tide through this time of difficulty. As you saw, in the beginning we helped our friends in China when they faced the difficult times.
As this has now largely become a global issue, we would like to know from our stakeholders what are the difficulties you are facing, and how the situation is affecting your table tennis activities.
As well, we would like to know if any persons have possibilities to assist and work with the ITTF during this time of crisis to help our table tennis community during these exceptional times.
Whether you are able to help, or if you want to share with us the situation in your respective region please write in to [email protected]. The ITTF can then consider how to put together an action plan to better provide support and assist our key stakeholders during and after this difficult period.
In addition to your possible feedback via email, and in coordination with our Athletes Commission, a survey to the athletes will be launched next week as well, so we better understand their individual situations.
We hope for this pandemic to be over soon, so we can all resume with our daily lives as per usual and come back to the table tennis arena that we all love.
Stay safe and healthy! Together we will overcome as a united table tennis family!
Yours sincerely,
ITTF president Thomas Weikert
ITTF CEO Steve Dainton