Retriever wrote:
Hi Torsten,
Thank you for your reply to my comments on your presentation. I appreciate the time and effort that you have taken.
Retriever wrote:
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I love the Orwellian way that the presentation ignores:
1. How the poly ball was originally justified.
Torsten responded:
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Newspeak is a fascinating language, but I'm not practising it too much. I came into office in May 2013 and not before, and therefore the presentation is focused on issues having arrived since then. One of these is suppliers confirming the increasing regulatory difficulties with c-balls. So on my page 16, I focused on that. But this does not preclude other reasons for the p-ball project.
But surely you must be aware of the changes in the way that the changeover has been justified since the original unsubstantiated ban touted at the highest levels, the latest being to slow the game down and lessen spin.
I just cannot judge if it can be called a change. I am recognizing that several reasons have been given during some time, but IMHO from a logical point of view they do not exclude each other. So I focus on the immediate feedback I get from the stakeholders.
Retriever wrote:
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2. How the size, only for the poly ball, was increased without being voted for at any publicly recorded level.
Torsten responded:
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The polyball size tolerance (!) is laid out in the Technical Leaflet T3, which is a public document (see my posting before), and the composition of the T3 is decided by the Board of Directors, which is responsible to the AGM, so the National Associations, their clubs and ultimately the players. Any proposals to achieve more public involvement but preserving the majority principle will surely be welcome.
Retriever:
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The first that most of us heard was when the T3 was changed for polyball only. Why not celluloid as well. In another post here at OOAK I asked, as a thought experiment, what would have happened if the old Barna plastic ball had still been in production in 40mm form, with the same specifications as the celluloid ball. Interesting question I thought. Would it have been banned, or grandfathered in?
This also highlights a certain disconnect between the grass roots ie the millions of recreational or amateur players and the ITTF, not to mention the national TT body. It also seems that there is not much that an individual national TT body can do, if my national body is anything to go by.
No doubt that the distance between us grass players (I am playing the third lowest league in Germany) and a world sports federation is hard to bridge. But as far as I learned up to now, it is at least not normally made worse
deliberately. The size tolerance increase is not the worst example: From my observations, the ITTF actually wanted to
avoid confusing players, so it was decided not to change the spec for a material which is expected to disappear shortly, possibly making existing balls illegal.
I read your Barna example before and can only provide a feeling: It would be in, for the same reason: No confusion about old material which will probably be overrun by new material.
Retriever wrote:
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3. The patent issue (held by the wife of an ITTF Equipment committee member, letter by the TT manufacturer body etc).
Torsten responded:
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This is because the EqC is not in charge of dealing with legal issues. The presentation is about technical issues and their immediate surroundings. I, personally, simply do not care about any patents.
Retriever:
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But surely you must be aware of what is going on, since at one stage the TT manufacturers were so concerned about the situation that they wrote a letter to the ITTF saying that they were not prepared to proceed with manufacturing the plastic ball until the patent issue was resolved. Of course we grass roots players never heard the results of this in detail, except that polyballs became available in very small quantities. Didn't this delay the process of changeover? Wasn't the EqC concerned about this delay, given that there were dates when polyballs were mandated to be used in various ITTF conducted tournaments, and also the weight dispensation that is to be withdrawn from January 2016 I believe?
Of course the EqC and me personally closely watched the patent discussion. What I wanted to say is: It is nothing that touches the technical aspects of balls testing. The spec release until January 2016 was the immediate result of a coinciding suggestion of the Athletes Commission and the manufacturers for further improvements. It was aiming at material composition. Whether or not some manufacturers also were concerned about a delay caused by any patent discussions within their company - this, as the "technical guy", I will not judge.
Retriever wrote:
4. How any further information / quibbles / serious questions will be dealt with by email.
Torsten responded:
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I have offered this slide for a quite surprising reason
: Because my intention is to answer as many of such questions as possible. Or in the worst case, tell you that we cannot answer it for some specific reason.
Retriever:
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Again thank you for taking the time to respond in this forum, outside the usual lines of communication. I did try to raise my concerns with the polyball introduction with my national TT body, but as far as I know it didn't go anywhere. You must be aware that many people on this forum are concerned about many things that have been done by the ITTF. The polyball changeover is the latest, and it does seem that it has been done via the back door. I would have expected that there would have been an explicit resolution to be voted on by all national bodies at the equivalent of the ITTF AGM and that things would have been more transparent.
Yes I know, this back-door feeling is really hard to bridge. As I said, seriously: Any ideas can be useful how to still better combine the worldwide-majority principle with being as public as possible, not only in table tennis. And even if none works, then perhaps more players are convinced that it's not the goal of all the sports federations to "cheat" on them.
Retriever wrote:
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Has anyone tried the email shown in the presentation?
Torsten responded:
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Yes. Dozens of ball manufacturers, suppliers and people just having questions.
Retriever:
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Thanks for that feed back.
>> Thank you as well for the kind welcome and the fair questions.