OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Well, Canada again with another Gold. I though our boys played a bit too rough, but the Vikings can take it. In any case, maybe next year for Sweden.

You can check out the World Junior Ranking on our website, you will notice the differences. In my opinion sports is cyclical, the same was said in the 1980s about China, then Sweden came along with a bunch of talented players and beat China in the 1990s, so all is possible. I think that in the future Japan, Korea, England, Russia and Germany will challenge China. Also the enxt generation from France is strong and possibly some odd player from here or there can always come up and challenge. But no one will be able to challenge China unless they train and compete as hard as the Chinese do. Also, in the case of Europe, the coaching methods need to be modernized.

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Adham Sharara

According to our research and TV audits, the TV audience overall in the world is:
1. Tennis
2. Table Tennis
3. Badminton
4. Squash

At the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, Table tennis was the highest ranked racket sport ahead of Tennis and Badminton

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Adham Sharara

Now who was it that said sleep was over-rated?

Happy Birthday to your son, hope he learns to cope with his Dad's skewed priorities. I think you better give him a really great present, but I think he'd prefer just time with you!

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
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LOL ROFLMAO. TT actually garnered a higher rating than other sports? The American Armed Forces Network (they have the best of every channel broadcast into several channels) played only a few TT matches, mainly womens matches. The guys in our camp were watching it with the same interest as pig wrestling in mud. They were clearly more motivated watching the water sports, even caneoing.

It isn't the ITTF fault that TT isn't popular in America nor a favored viewer sport. Next to no one young plays it seriously. (maybe a thousand registered out of nearly 100 million qualifies as next to none in anyone's books) There are practically zero programs, facilities, coaches who know even USATT 1000 level, equipment, funding, commitment from the school district administrations, nor any will whatsoever to make a program. That instantly makes it an underground sport.

It would take schools, govt, and maybe some heavy support from companies to make it into big time at schools, then as a competitive sport. Soccer used a similar path to better acceptance and support and it shows improvement every year as a legit sport in USA.

I don't feel that there is a whole lot the ITTF can practically do to change this in the near term, except to continue to remain supportive and engaging. Rallies are not why TT is relatively unpopular. There are great rallies and great matches at the pro levels all the time. Rule changes certainly won't change this, but they were approved for other reasons and life goes on. You won't see me blaming the ITTF for ruining TT in USA. We brought our own situation upon ourselves on our own accord.

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IMO it isn't the job of the ITTF to dumb down the sport to make it appeal to one individual nations taste. Tabletennis is popular in many countries, China, Sweden, Germany etc etc bacause of a difference in culture education and how sport is funded at school and international level. It is up to the US federation to do things in their country, not to change the rules of the sport to make it attractive, but to educate the people. Can you imagine if chess adopted the same approach? 'Hey guys, to make attractive to the US, forget the board and the pieces, we need teams of guys in armour, fighting for real, with cheerleaders, and and...' The (slow) rise of the popularity of soccer is a good case, but also some sports just aren't designed for mass TV, badminton, squash, these don't need rule changes to make them popular. And if you want to make things popular to more people, the recent pips rule has meant a lot of disabled guys are now not playing in our provincial leagues, many vets have packed it in too

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Highest ranked as in most watched? Aren't those numbers a bit unreliable, seeing that Chinese national TV will have extensively covered the TT games, but that does not mean that TT is watched more than tennis outside of China...

(as always, IMO, I don't have the factual records)

~~Jasper

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These are world-wide statistics. Of course in some markets TT is non-existent on TV and in others it is very high. The reason TT does well on the Olympic Ratings is because of China, Korea and Japan with huge audiences. But as a matter of interest, TT ranked 11th out of 28 sports in the UK TV market for the 2008 Olympic Games TV ratings. A study was done by the Association of Summer Olympic Sports (ASOIF) in China (2008 hosts) and the UK (2012 hosts) for the Beijing GAmes TV audiences. TT ranked 4th in China overall and 11th in the UK. Not bad when competing with 28 sports. Also the fact that Chinese were in all finals (China vs China) reduced the viewership of the Chinese during the Finals. By the way, in 2004 (Athens) TT ranked 5th world-wide (out of 28 sports), and in 1992 in Barcelona TT ranked 24th (out of 26 sports then).

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Adham Sharara

This is according to the IOC's own figures done in 26 markets (Europe is considered one market, and the UK one market). They use several criteria such as prime-time audience, highest ranked event, highest ranked match, how many people watched a sport for at least 15 consecutive minutes, etc. It is a very detailed analysis done by a specialized company on behalf of the IOC. Actually Tennis at the Olympic Games is not a major sport. The reason is that the Olympic Tournament for Tennis is considered lower than many of the ATP events (Wimbledon, US Open, French Open, etc.), this attests to the strength of Tennis overall, but at the Olympics, same as Football (Soccer) they are not strong as far as TV audiences are concerned.

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Adham Sharara

Der-E, until table tennis becomes a college (university) scholarship type sport in the US, no parent or kids are willing to spend too much time training in this sport when they can spend time and training in other sports like tennis, soccer, football, basket ball, volley ball, swimming, etc to get a much better chance into college.

There are only a few table tennis programs in US college and they are not in the best college either. When I have to make a decision to get my boy into sport, tennis is the sport we chose for him just because almost all major colleges have major tennis programs. The chance is extremely good of being recruited into US top universities even if you are in the top 200 in the US junior ranking and has much better chance than playing great table tennis.

I have made the best decision for my son to steer him into learning and playing tennis since he was 8, he graduated from Yale University a year ago, playing number 1 in their tennis program and being awarded Ivy League player of the year in his Junior and Senior years. He is now working in New York.

Unfortunately, playing table tennis in the US won't get him into any top Universities here, we don't have the system.

Wow, Yale, that's pretty cool. Talk about a scholarship that paid off!!!

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"The greatest teacher, failure is"
USATT Rating: 1725
Blade: Stiga Cybershape Carbon
FH Rubber: Butterfly Tenergy 19 2.1
BH Rubber: Dr Neubauer ABS3 1.5

Other than that, looks like the study has been well thought through, and the increase in popularity from Barcelona to Athens is significant!

Thanks for the clarification.


~~Jasper

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Yale. Yep, I tried to go there. Sent them my transripts too. But I didn't understand why they sent them back to me with a sticky note attached with "LMAO" written on it. What does that mean?

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USATT Rating: 1869

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There is a web page, but it is an amateur hour production. Our sport's heritage deserves more.

http://www.ittf.com/museum/Hof/HoF.html

USATT's page is better, but still dreadful compared to those of other major sports.

http://www.usatt.org/organization/halloffame/index.html

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Both the basketball and tennis have their hall of fame buildings and installed their hall of famers every year. It is a shame that table tennis is so much lagging behind.

Well when the number 1 TT player in Australia has to take a job to live, and therefore de-focus his TT somewhat, it is pretty obvious TT does not provide the paychecks other sports do.

I agree with Tat. Scholarships are not as common in Australia, but university education is expensive everywhere I think (certainly here). So getting it to be a scholarship sport is likely to be the only way to move it up the sport rankings. Now when many of the good pros can't make a full-time living from it, why would they make it a scholarship sport? The players have no interest to turn pro as there's no living to be made from it. The universities won't have any prestige about their "boys" turning pro, so why would they offer it?

The key to it all has to surely be boosting the paychecks at pro-level and increasing the number turning pro, so it becomes a sort after and economically viable thing for players to aim for.

_________________
I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.