Table Tennis

Whack! The ball goes flying across the table. The Olympic sport that I am most interested in is table tennis also known as ping pong and wiff-waff. Table tennis is an indoor sport played in the Summer Olympics and was introduced in 1988 at Seoul, Korea. It is played by either two or four athletes who hold a racquet and hit a ball back and forth over a table. It is a sport very similar in concept to tennis. The equipment needed for table tennis is a paddle, ball and table. The racquet is small and made of wood with a coating of rubber on both sides. The ball is forty millimeters and is made of celluloid plastic and is hollow. The ball is either white or orange with a matte finish. The table is nine feet long, five feet wide and is divided by a net that is six inches high.
Table tennis is the most popular racket sport in the world. In the Olympics, there are men’s and women’s singles and team events. The skills needed to excel in this competitive game are quick reflexes, good hand-eye coordination, even temperament and years of practice. Most Olympic athletes in this sport are at the height of their career in their twenties and some athletes stay in the sport through their forties! The best players in the game excel at ball spin, speed, placement, strategy and tactics. All are required to score well and win in the Olympics!