China has won 41 medals out of 76 medals given in the Olympics.
All these sets will be out of 11. You may be used to 21 pt sets, but that ended in 2001.
This will be the 7th time the Olympics have Table Tennis. Only three players have been in every one. 1991 World Champ Jorgen Persson from Sweden, Zoran Primorac from Croatia, and Jean-Michel Saive from Belgium.
Miss Wang Nan from China currently dominates with Most Medals Won. She holds 4 gold and 1 silver medal. There are currently 8 players with 4 medals seeking to tie her holdings.
Ma Lin (who I personally love to see play) is the only male player to have won three gold medals (2 in 2008 and 1 in 2004)
Of special interest to our Starcraft gamers, South Korea has won 17 medals in Table Tennis including 3 golds. North Korea, by contrast, holds 3 medals, none of which are golds. 6 athletes from DPRK's 51 at the Summer Olympics compete for Table Tennis.
Personal Definitely watching Ma Long (China), Werner Schlager (Austria!) and all the USA members that I have seen play in person!
Thanks to all the guys from ITTF that do very good work writing articles and compiling these lists! ITTF.com
Last edit: 2012-07-29 05:53:09
MC HuK HerO Creator HWAITING || Go iS! || Great armies come from happy zealots, and happy zealots come from California!
As a child I always wondered how people took this sport seriously. After devoting so much of my time to video games, I completely understand and can only imagine how good these Olympians are. Any streams? XD
Table tennis reminds me a lot of Starcraft (especially BW) total domination by one country just that they always only have a limited amount of players which can participate in the international competions else i would imagine there would be harly any none chinese players in the top 20 wolrdranking They seem to have such huge depth of really really strong players. A few years ago the top players of my state made some exchange training trip to china apprently the best player from my state barely managed to win vs a 12 year old girl kinda odd >_> While my state aint the strongest in germany... germany is still with South Korea and Japan one of the strongest countries apart from china.
Ah well it seems like in europe french has some decent players coming up and i heard actually some player of iran was suprisingly good at some asian tourney. I hope at least the players will give it their best shot against the chinese. From some of the better europeans (Gionis at the team WC for example) it felt like they admit defeat before match starts and the games are then just boring to watch. I still hope that we dont see a chinese only final allthough i doubt it..
Last edit: 2012-07-26 21:18:35
Danglars United States. July 26 2012 04:09. Posts 1923
When that ping pong ball can reach speeds of 100mph and you have less than a second to react, you start to wonder how it could possibly not be considered a sport. It has a big divide between amateur and professional (commonly referred to as "basement players") since you can't even pick up a decent racket at your local Sports Authority because they aren't offered. I trained for 5 years and managed to win some junior events and double trophies and let me tell you ... the weight lifting and physical training required is ridiculous. Endurance is key as is the spring in your feet to cover the table.
Off topic aside, the Chinese have as strong a team as ever and present a challenge to all the top-in-the-world players. Chinese train so hard so early from almost a cultural standpoint (You hear stories of 5 years old being the perfect age in China to start teaching your kid ping pong. Cheng for example started then). With the 7 hours a day practice and daily morning physical training a norm, you start to feel like table tennis in China possesses the advantage that Starcraft in Korea does.
And yes, lamentable about Wang Liqin. A superstar not there.
Last edit: 2012-07-26 04:21:58
MC HuK HerO Creator HWAITING || Go iS! || Great armies come from happy zealots, and happy zealots come from California!
Aerisky United States. July 26 2012 20:44. Posts 9262
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They seem to have such huge depth of really really strong players. A few years ago the top players of my state made some exchange training trip to china apprently the best player from my state barely managed to win vs a 12 year old girl kinda odd >_> While my state aint the strongest in germany... germany is still with South Korea and Japan one of the strongest countries apart from china. 
Kipsate Netherlands. July 27 2012 01:30. Posts 18215
FliedLice Germany. July 28 2012 09:52. Posts 6482
