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Olympic Games 2008
Which men's teams qualified?
Which men's teams qualified for the 2008 Olympics?
Were all the best players there? Find out here...
By Martin Hughes
Owner and Editor
The Olympic Games were held in Beijing in the People's Republic of China from 8 to 24 August 2008 and we saw some fabulous table tennis.
Although the opening ceremony took place on 8 August 2008, the table tennis didn't actually start until Wednesday 13 August 2008.
A fabulous new state-of-the-art venue had been built at Peking University specifically for this event - so the players had the best possible conditions in which to play.
It had seating for 8,000 spectators - with 6,000 seats being permanent and 2,000 temporary.
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But...
Were all the best players there?
Unfortunately, because each National Olympic Committee (NOC) could only have a maximum of three men and three women competing, some of the stronger nations like China had several players who, despite being in the top 20 of the World Ranking list, were not at the Olympics.
However, this meant that the rivalry between the various nationalities was more intense, and provided us with some excellent matches.
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So...
How did players qualify?
There was 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 qualified for the Olympic Games as follows:
- 6 Continental teams (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Oceania)
- 10 selected teams
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So, which teams and players actually qualified...
Teams/players who qualified for the Olympics 2008
| Team | Players |
| Continental teams (6) | |
| Africa (Nigeria) | TORIOLA Segun MEROTOHUN Monday NOSIRU Ekundayo |
| Asia (China) | WANG Hao MA Lin WANG Liqin |
| Europe (Germany) | BOLL Timo OVTCHAROV Dimitrij SÜSS Christian |
| Latin America (Brazil) | TSUBOI Gustavo MONTEIRO Thiago HOYAMA Hugo |
| North America (Canada) | ZHANG Peng PETER-PAUL Pradeeban SHEN Qiang |
| Oceania (Australia) | HENZEL William DAVIS Kyle ZALCBERG David |
| Selected teams (10) | |
| Korea Republic | RYU Seung Min OH Sang Eun YOON Jae Young |
| Hong Kong | LI Ching KO Lai Chak CHEUNG Yuk |
| Austria | SCHLAGER Werner GARDOS Robert CHEN Weixing |
| Japan | KAN Yo MIZUTANI Jun KISHIKAWA Seiya |
| Singapore | GAO Ning YANG Zi CAI Xiaoli |
| Chinese Taipei | CHUAN Chih-Yuan CHIANG Peng-Lung CHANG Yen-Shu |
| Croatia | PRIMORAC Zoran TAN Ruiwu GACINA Andrej |
| Greece | KREANGA Kalinikos GIONIS Panagiotis TSIOKAS Ntaniel |
| Sweden | PERSSON Jorgen LUNDQVIST Jens GERELL Per |
| Russia | SMIRNOV Alexei KUZMIN Fedor MAZUNOV Dmitry |
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