OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I even think, that maybe it is completely unimportant for the TT in the country, whether they have top players or not. My personal experience: the vast majority of players don't care. They simply play, because they like it.

Important is existence of a developed club system in the country. E.g. in Germany there are more than 10 000 clubs based on school gyms. Generally the school gyms "belong" to the clubs after 17.00. This is what is really beneficial for TT, not just possible Timo Boll's inflated Olympic bronze.

Yes, but we only agree when you distort my original statement which was:

You cut it down to achieve agreement when in fact - if left uncut - my words mean something else, i.e. that I don't think it will matter one bit. That is quite different from the angle you created by posting just a snippet, isn't it?

So do we have agreement on my full, untouched quote as well?

Count yourself lucky he did not edit the quote... that's really confused me in the past

Look, my English (unlike the number of participants... ) is limited. Sorry, I can't see any distortion. To me, "I can not see a great benefit" is unambiguous. To me it means "not very good". So I agree with that. The words "I see no endless pit of darkness either" seem to mean "not very bad". That means to me, your opinion is between "not very bad" and "not very good". My opinion is rather "very bad", which however doesn't contradict your "not very good".

So I can only partly agree with you. Even if you wish more. Maybe next time.

Could you be so kind and give me one example of an incorrectly edited quote?

I always thought I cut out the relevant fragments for my comments.

Sorry, I was talking about speedplay who has on occasions has edited my quotes with some very funny results, not you. I thought brab was as well, but reading back it seems he wasn't

Another consideration, how beneficial the new proposal can be.

Currently the limit is 3 players per country. If the limit goes to 2, the places of the strong Chinese, Japanese, German etc. players will be taken by weaker ones, who otherwise would have no chance to come through qualification.

Which means, the average level of the Olympic TT will be lower, then now.

Thus the proposal even contradicts this provision of the Olympic Charter:

At the last Olympics the player with the lowest ranking was № 849. I don't think the № 849 may be considered "adequately prepared for high level international competition". It may go well below this level.

I have to agree with Smartguy here, by reducing the participants to 2 from each country, the value of the Olympics medals will decrease as their will be so many of the top players missing. Sure, even with 3 participants/country, there are lots of good players missing, but this new proposal will only make it worse.

Imagine if the Hockey federation wanted to grow the sport in the same way, saying that USA and Canada would have to play each other to determine who would get to play, the same for Sweden, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Czech and Germany, only 3 of those would be allowed as the hockey federation wanted the sport to grow, so they would invite some African and Asian nations instead. Would this increase the popularity of the sport?

I have never done that and would certainly never stoop to such low levels in any serious conversation.

I leave the doctoring of documents to Tony Blair and... Speedplay.

Certainly not in Sweden, Russia, USA, Canada and the rest of the cream of icehockey. But it could very well raise the level of popularity in South Africa if they - as you suggest - were allowed to send a team. They would surely get royally whooped in every game, but they were there, participated and was supported by a number of their countrymen who for the the first time was exposed to icehockey. First by seeing the ridiculous low level of their own country, then they were amazed by the sheer beauty of the Russian and Czech play and impressed by the physicality of the Canadian game. Perhaps they even grew to love icehockey during that fictional tournament.

The point being, that multiply the above with ten new nations and you may register a small global growth in popularity. Repeat the event and you will see further growth, etc, etc. Growth in popularity is what every sport is looking to achieve.

As for the level of competition, the cream always rises to the top. You will get the best games later in the tournament, but you will get them.

In the meantime, you can get some excellent entertainment out of an amateur - Eddie the Eagle.
Or you can get beautiful underdog stories about some foolish clowns who don't understand anything about the sport, but achieve amazing results in the end - the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

Those two examples is what every sport would give anything to have. The publicity generated around these fan favourites served bobsleigh and ski jumping far better than any duel between the top three teams in the world.

And it is all in the spirit of the Olympics, which is still what the proposed changes will affect.

You are still distorting my words. This time you take out two sentences out of the three and interpret them. There is a third sentence and it is important not to ignore that to get the overall picture of what I say.

It is much the same method you use when presenting your other arguments here. You present parameters A and B, but ignore the context and the greater picture - parameters C and D - to make your argument work. It does not work like that (except in economics, which is a different story.)

As for your understanding of English, I see no reason to hide behind a statement of it being limited. If you are able to read and interpret regulatory paragraphs written by ITTF lawyers - the ones you urge us all to read critically a few posts above - then presumably you should be able to understand my English with less effort.

Your opinion of "very bad" is very much not in agreement with my view of "very little will change".

Alright, I gave one example without any preference or ranking as is indicated by "for example"at the end of the sentence:

This example was meant to illustrate that we may not have to guess what lies ahead, but we could perhaps learn from what has happened to other sports after the change. I am sure there are sports that can give us a pointer as to what has changed for them. Your example swimming, much like taekwondo, is probably not the best of sports to compare to either.

In any case, I just proposed a possibility of how to get a clearer picture of what the future may actually look like, as opposed to basing the discussion on speculation only. I believe anything is better than pure speculation when we discuss subjects as serious as how these changes will affect our sport.

I agree with you Hockey analyse, to some extent, but not all the way. Cause, the way I see it, we can not only look at the sport and it's popularity, we also have to look at fairness for the participators. Imagine growing up in China, dreaming of the Olympic gold for your entire life, but never being able to compete at the Olympic games, cause getting there is actually a lot harder then winning it once you are there. This is already how it is for Chinese players, but reducing the number of participants would make a bad thing even worse. Now imagine sitting at home and watching some low level player from ThelandofnoTTinterest getting to play, even though you know you would beat him while using the wrong hand. How would this make you feel?

Eddie the Eagle, who you use as an axample was one of my favourites, no doubt, but, he might not be a good example for you to use, since IOC tried to get rid of him by changing the rules. Not sure how that worked out, but I know they did what they could to prevent him from further participation.

Is this supposed to be about me? If so, thanks for the compliments

This is absolutely correct.