LONDON 2012 PARALYMPICS
D 26 H 6 M 11 S 50
Table Tennis
Jon Persson
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“All six players in the GB team are currently in China to participate in the China Open Pro Tour Championships followed by an intensive training camp. This is just one of many great performance enhancing opportunities made possible by funding support from the Lottery and UK Sport in our build up to London 2012.”
Richard Yule, Chief Executive, ETTA
Table Tennis has made strides over the London cycle despite challenging circumstances at the performance level, primarily due to the extremely high standards of international competition, particularly from China.
The performance programme has been restructured to focus on a small athlete cohort, with a player-focused coaching team who are largely based at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in Sheffield.
Players are also now working extensively at European clubs to improve their standard of play and day-to-day quality of training and sparring.
The sport has recovered well from the disappointment of the reduction in programme investment in 2009 – which has had an impact on staffing structures. Much recent time has been spent internally and with UK Sport, focusing on developing talent pathways, and developing a high performance culture within the sport.
There are currently five athletes in receipt of Development level Athlete Personal Awards, three of whom have been selected for London 2012.
The UK Sport Major Events team has worked to deliver two major events in partnership with the sport. The English Open Table Tennis Championships is considered to be one of the sport’s big events, and was voted by the ITTF as the 'best pro-tour event in the world'. A top field of players competed in Sheffield in 2009, and again in 2011, with the latter presenting an invaluable opportunity for British athletes to experience international competition in the close lead up to the Games in addition to increasing the skills and experience of volunteers and officials.
Did You Know?
Although not one for London, exciting 13 year old prospect Tin Tin Ho won the French Cadet Open Championships following her earlier win in the Portuguese Open earlier in the year.
*Accurate as of May 2012
Selected athletes:
Joanna Parker
Kelly Sibley
Paul Drinkhall
Liam Pitchford
Andrew Baggaley
Na Liu
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