Table tennis has gone through several stages of development. In 1950s, Japanese players created backhand grip, which occupied a dominant position in table tennis. After that, the penhold technique was carried forward by China players and dominated the world until the mid-1980s. In the middle and late 1980s, the development of table tennis in China fell into a trough, and the Swedish men's team from Europe began to rise, winning the men's team championship in the World Table Tennis Championships for three consecutive times with 1989, 19 1 and 1993. Since the end of 1990s, China men's table tennis has risen again, regaining the Swiss Cup with 1999 and 200 1.
Table tennis first entered the Olympic Games on 1988, and has made great progress since then, becoming one of the sports with the largest number of participants. At present, ITTF has more than 187 members.
In recent years, ITTF has made great changes to the rules of table tennis competition. A series of reforms, such as "changing a small ball into a big ball", "changing the match system from 2 1 to1"and "serving without shielding", have narrowed the strength gap between players and increased the antagonism and contingency of the game. In order to prevent a country or region from monopolizing the Olympic champion and runner-up, ITTF stipulates that in the Olympic doubles competition, two pairs of players from the same association must be divided into the same half. In this way, there will be two pairs of players from different countries and regions in the doubles final, and the game will be more suspenseful.
There are four events in the Olympic table tennis competition: men's singles and men's doubles. There are 86 men and 86 women, including 64 singles and 32 doubles. Each country/region can only have three men and three women in singles and only two pairs in doubles. The competition adopts the elimination system of 4 wins in 7 games, 1 1 point, single loss and elimination in each game.
Table tennis is the national sport of China, and China table tennis has made outstanding achievements in recent competitions. At the 47th World Table Tennis Championships in 2003, China won six other championships except men's singles, and even won all four championships at the ITTF Tour at the end of the year. At the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, China also won all four gold medals.
In this Olympic Games, China, Wang, Wang Nan and Zhang Yining are still the strongest contenders for four gold medals. Their main competitors are German Bohr, Austrian Shi Lage, Belarusian samsonov and host player glinka.
Olympic events:
Men: singles and doubles
Women: singles and doubles