Table Tennis Olympics 2008
Men - Who Qualified?

The Olympic Games are being held in Beijing in the People's Republic of China from 8 to 24 August 2008 and I'm sure we'll see some fabulous table tennis.

Although the opening ceremony takes place on
8 August 2008, the table tennis olympics don't actually start until Wednesday 13 August 2008.

A fabulous new state-of-the-art venue has been built at Peking University specifically for this event - so the players will have the best possible conditions in which to play.

It has seating for 8,000 spectators - with 6,000 seats being permanent and 2,000 temporary.

Unfortunately, because each National Olympic Committee (NOC) can only have a maximum of three men and three women competing, some of the stronger nations like China will have several players who, despite being in the top 20 of the World Ranking list, will not be at the Olympics.

However, this means that the rivalry between the various nationalities will be more intense, and should provide us with some excellent matches.

There's a complicated system of qualification for the Olympic table tennis event, but without getting too bogged down with the full details, here's a brief summary ...

Singles Events

For each of the singles events, 64 table tennis players will qualify for the Olympic Games as follows:

• The top 20 players on the ITTF World Ranking list as at 3 January 2008 (with a maximum of two players per NOC)
  
  
• 40 players who qualify via continental qualification events held between July 2007 and April 2008 (Africa 6, Asia 11, Europe 11, Latin America 6, North America 3 and Oceania 3)
  
  
• One player by invitation of the IOC/ANOC/ITTF
  
  
• The top three players at the Final World Qualification Tournament who have not already qualified

The number of qualification places for the Singles events from the Final World Qualification Tournament may be increased if ...

• the continental allocation of 40 players is not reached
• the host nation direct entry place is not used and/or
• the Team Quota of 22 places is not fully utilised