r/sports • u/back-in-1999 • Aug 10 '24

Table Tennis China wins the women's table tennis team event continuing the domination, as they go 63:0 (in games) since the conception of the team event in 2008.

https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/results/table-tennis/women-s-team/fnl-00010000
114 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

32

u/TheMooseIsBlue Aug 10 '24

Isn’t this basically why they yanked baseball and softball? Is this sport really played at remotely the same level in any other country?

14

u/Kaiisim Aug 11 '24

No. It was dropped because the elite players wouldn't join because the Olympics is the same time as the world's main league the MLB. The other countries also struggled to field teams.

It's back for 2028 though! It's fine if a nation dominates a sport, as long as its popular and has the best players in the world.

-31

u/prettyflyforahentai Aug 10 '24

No, and who is dominating baseball and softball like that?

20

u/bblackow Aug 10 '24

They removed baseball and softball because the IOC felt most countries really didn’t care about the sports and there was no competition. Basically the same thing that’s going on with table tennis.

9

u/Intentionallyabadger Aug 11 '24

Well table tennis is growing steadily in Scandinavian countries. Much like badminton (though badminton was always popular), a breakthrough will happen sooner or later.

But that’s on the men’s side.. the women’s side is just one-way traffic .

-7

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24

[deleted]

2

u/soundwave75 Aug 11 '24

More than baseball? Sure...

-7

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '24

[deleted]

11

u/MrMCCO Aug 11 '24

A good half of Latin America could field competitive teams

1

u/salmacis Aug 11 '24

Why should baseball be in the Olympics and not cricket? Cricket is popular in more countries, and beats baseball massively in the total number of fans (thanks almost exclusively to India).

The answer is that for both baseball and cricket (and indeed softball) the cost of creating suitable stadiums was way out of proportion to the value to the host nation. To be honest, I don't think either sport is popular in enough nations to be worthy of a place.

3

u/cavegrind Aug 11 '24

Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Canada, Netherlands, Panama…

7

u/hawlc Aug 10 '24

China too good for everyone else in Table Tennis.

7

u/RainmanCT Aug 11 '24

Sweden gave quite a run and knocked out world number 1 in the Singles event.

2

u/Moreinius Aug 11 '24

Then there’s the second number 1 who won it back anyway 😭

Absolutely no chance for anyone

1

u/soligen Aug 10 '24

Holy shit lol

-2

u/nimama3233 Aug 11 '24

Table tennis is great fun, but the team competition format is just nonsense.