Table Tennis Olympics 2008

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 events, but without getting too bogged down with the full details, here's a brief summary ...

Team Events

For the team events, 16 teams will qualify for the Olympic Games as follows:

• 6 Continental teams (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Oceania)
• 1 Host Nation team
• 9 selected teams (or 10 if host nation already qualified)