OOAK Table Tennis Forum

This whole thing is just a badly thought out popularity contest.

Samsonov had 94.7% of the vote. His entire campaign statement wasn't even a complete sentence:

"Better communication between ITTF and players."

That's it!

Joo came in second with 80% of the vote. His entire campaign statement was:

"I would like to do my utmost not only to protect and promote the rights and interests of players but also to communicate with players effectively."

Henzell's statement is the only one with any substance:

"My hope is to restore player trust in the decision making of the ITTF. The players have had to live through so many rule changes over the past 10 years and unfortunately for us, a lot of these changes have been difficult to understand and impossible to enforce. Instead of new machines to test whether rubber is 3.99mm or 4.00mm thick, we need to put all our effort into making table tennis as attractive as possible to spectators, sponsors and our players. I will work hard to make sure the ITTF listens to the experience and knowledge the players have to offer."

Beh Lee Wei, who came in last had no statement at all.

Other statements:

Saive: I want to bring my experience to the Commission: Athletes' Commission as first a player (I have played internationally since 1983) and also my experience as "official" for the athlete member of the Executive Board in the Belgian Olympic Committee, Vice-President of the Athletes' Commission of the Belgian Olympic Committee, member of the European Olympic Athletes' Commission. I was 4 years President of the CTTP (club of table tennis professionals)

Carneros: To try to make our sport more professional. Fight for the rights of the players. The athletes should be more involved in all the statements because our opinion is the most important to improve table tennis.

Toth: I would like to represent the table tennis coaches' and players' ideas and wishes to bring our sport forward. I think this election gives us – players – a chance to express our opinion. I find it very important to represent us in ITTF. I have always some idea in my head how to make table tennis better and I would like to represent the players and coaches because we-they are very important. I hope I can work for table tennis to make our sport more popular and attractive.

No question the ITTF Executive Committee wants to keep a tight leash on this group by having one ITTF appointee for each elected member.

They won't even allow to the group to pick their own chairman without Executive Committee approval.

Also Henzell missed by three votes. Five ballots were mysteriously thrown out. I wonder what votes were on those?

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The thing about conspiracy theories is that they are extremely easy to promote but impossible to either prove or disprove. Simply because you hate the ITTF does not automatically mean that there is skullduggery afoot. If you can't substantiate that there was wrongdoing then I think it's irresponsible to start baseless rumours.

A spoiled ballot paper is exactly that: a spoiled ballot paper.

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"So long, and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this" Sung by the dolphins in The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Firstly, the uncounted ballots are a legitimate question.

Secondly, I have never said I hate the ITTF as you insinuate. I question some of their decision-making as Mr. Henzell does, and strongly disagree with some of their policies that have had a detrimental effect on non-pro recreational players.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
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My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

I would agree that Henzel's is the only one with substance... he'd get my vote! Makes me wonder if the other applicant even knew what the commission was all about.

Still it's not surprising that the more famous players get the most votes... some would have voted only for the players they know... and the more famous ones are probably known by everyone!

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And? So how he knew it was an "umbalanced" group? I did not make that claim. He did.

Hi all. I'm a little surprised by just HOW much ill-will and lack of confidence there is in the ITTF around here. And I thought I was critical! I have not been formally notified, but have been told, that I received one of the appointed AC positions. Wang Liqin was apparently another apointee. Please take this all with a pinch of salt until formally announced however.

I can assure you there will be no gagging and that we / I will not accept any instruction of pressure from above to be good boys and girls and say the right things. I have made my criticisms well known (just see my AC statement ) so if Adham was hand-choosing the appointees to serve his bidding, I don't think I would have gained a jersey.

Re the spoiled votes, a voting requirement was that you HAD to vote for 5 of the 7 candidates (yes, 7 candidates is a poor showing). Would have been pretty easy for some to not vote for all 5.

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ttEDGE.com
By William Henzell and Brett Clarke
Table Tennis Coaching | ttEDGE YouTube

I'm very pleased to hear that, and considering you made your position quite clear up-front, it restores a lot of my confidence in the ITTF in making this a fair and independent commission!

I hope you won't forget to keep us up to date with the latest issues that this commission deals with, apart from the private and confidential issues of course, which you can send me via PM.

Congrats William!

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"Arguing" or "debating" about anything with you is just not worth it, Speedplay. I have better things to do with my time.

You are the moderator, you check this forum's every single post constantly, and you ALWAYS have the final word. It's boring.

I will ignore every one of your posts from now on.

Well done! I really, really hope that you are on the Commission, and that the experience is a positive one for you. Yes, you have made known your concerns about some of the ITTF's decisions; it will be enlightening for us to hear how your up-close-and-personal experience of working with them goes.


Ha! Being a good Australian citizen and voting in Senate elections, you probably know just how easy it is to stuff up a ballot paper.


I'm not surprised that you're surprised.

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"So long, and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this" Sung by the dolphins in The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Congratulations on the good news.

Yes, the string of poor decisions by the ITTF that you mentioned in a previous post have a trickle down effect that has caused great damage to the lower levels of the sport and negatively impacted millions of amateurs who play recreational table tennis for fun and exercise.

For example, the ITTF implemented the questionable frictionless and VOC-free tuning bans without regard to the fact that these bans are almost impossible to enforce in recreational competition. As a result, players who do not tune their rubbers or treat their long pips are at a disadvantage to those who do and there is no way for local officials to protect the players who follow the rules.

The ITTF says amateur players should just use the honor system, but if it was that easy why doesn't the ITTF use the honor system too? Even Adham says that strict ITTF international rules shouldn't be used for recreational play, but the ITTF gives no direction to the national associations in this regard. They simply say the NAs can set any rules they like and it's 'not our problem.' But that's just lip service as they know full well that virtually all national associations automatically adopt their rules. That is irresponsible.

Also amateurs don't like the rules of "our" game being changed for reasons that don't benefit those that actually play it. 99% of us will never have our games on TV which is allegedly why these changes were made.

Further, the ITTF's erratic handling of rubber approvals have forced many amateur players to just throw away perfectly good, very expensive rubbers on multiple occasions when they are taken off the LARC.

These are a few of the reasons that many recreational players have a negative opinion of the job the ITTF is doing.

I hope things can change for the better soon.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
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My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

It's official!!!

Australia’s William Henzell, Ashu Jain from the United States of America, Guatemala’s Jose- Miguel Ramirez, Nigeria’s Offiong Edem and China’s Wang Liqin are the five members of the ITTF Athletes Commission appointed by the Executive Committee of the International Table Tennis Federation on Thursday 12th May 2011.

They join the five elected members Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus, Korea’s Joo Se Hyuk, Belgium’s Jean-Michel Saive, Hungary’s Krisztina Toth and Spain’s Alfredo Carneros on the the eleven strong Commission.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

Any particular reason for leaving out Alena Kanova of Slovakia? I'm assuming that Para Table Tennis is worth mentioning.

Out of interest, are they all two winged inverted loopers?

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"So long, and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this" Sung by the dolphins in The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Hey, I just copied the text on the ITTF front page. Maybe they mention her on the complete story.


I think they are. Offiong Edem is a woman.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

It will be very interesting to see how this all works.

Let's get this started with something that is fresh in our minds - from your point of view as table tennis nuts: what has been good and bad about the World Championships?

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ttEDGE.com
By William Henzell and Brett Clarke
Table Tennis Coaching | ttEDGE YouTube

A very good topic, but you'll probably get a lot more responses if you a new thread on this...

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