Table Tennis

Countries	Athletes	Events
56	172	4

Schedule & Results

Table Tennis

Daily Calendar

Event

Date		Event		Status

Downloads

About

Key Facts
Rules
30-Second Expert

Aim of the game

Popularly known as ‘ping-pong’, the sport consists of two players either side of a waist-high table using small bats to hit a light, plastic ball over the net and onto the other side, winning a point if the opponent fails to return it

Why should you watch this?

The ninja-like reflexes of the players cannot fail but amaze those watching – just imagine trying to return a smash travelling at full pace towards you from the bat of an Olympic champion

Venues

Riocentro - Pavilion 3

International Federation

ITTF

Olympic debut

Seul 1988

Topspin

Attacking stroke that generates speed and spin on the ball
Block

Shot used to counter a topspin stroke, turning the speed of the attacking shot back on the opponent
Chop

Striking sharply under the ball to slow it down and make it bounce low off the playing surface

Impress your friends

Table tennis was invented in England around 1880, as an improvised after-dinner game using a champagne-cork ball, cigar-box lids as bats and piles of books as a net
Table tennis first appeared at the Rome 1960 Paralympic Games and took almost 30 years to finally become an Olympic sport, in Seoul 1988
Sweden’s Jan-Ove Waldner won the men’s singles title at the Barcelona 1992 Games and remains the only non-Asian player to have won an Olympic gold medal in table tennis
Chinese athletes have dominated Olympic table tennis since day one, winning 24 of the 28 golds ever awarded, including a clean sweep at London 2012
Table tennis is considered the most popular racquet sport in the world, with over 300 million players in five continents
The top players can spin the ball at up to 9,000 revolutions per minute
The name ping-pong was registered by a North American company who entered into a long-running battle with the table tennis association for control of the sport, hence the ongoing use of both names

Scoring

Matches are split up into games in which the first player(s) to score 11 points wins. If players or teams tie at 10-10, a two-point margin is needed to win. A singles match is the best of seven games and the team competition consists of four singles matches and one doubles, each one the best of five games.

A player wins a point when the opponent:

- misses the table with the ball as he attempts to return it

- plays the ball into the net

- misses the ball altogether after it has hit their side of the table

- touches the playing surface with their free hand

Service

A serve must bounce once on both sides of the table to be valid (in doubles games, players on the same side take turns returning the ball) and the server alternates every two points or after every point if the score reaches 10-10.

The ball is playable whenever it has touched the playing surface on the opponent’s side of the net, even if it hits the line or edge, or goes ‘around’ the side of the net.