The development of table tennis

in p>1988, table tennis first appeared as a formal event in the 24th Olympic Games. Up to now, table tennis competitions have been held for five consecutive Olympic Games.

The Olympic table tennis tournament is held every four years. Originally, there were four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles and women's doubles.

The total number of participants in the Olympic Games is limited. As the policy of the International Olympic Committee at that time was to reduce the number of team events and people as much as possible, the ITTF had just joined the Olympic Games and had to accept this restriction. Moreover, at that time, the International Olympic Committee was not interested in the team events of individual sports, so the first agreement reached between the ITTF and the Olympic Committee was that only 64 male athletes and 32 female athletes could participate in the men's and women's singles competitions in the Olympic Games. After that, we discussed with the head of the Olympic Committee again and added the men's and women's doubles events. At that time, the quota for table tennis players by the International Olympic Committee was 192. Finally, the number of table tennis players who entered the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games was: 64 men's singles, 48 women's singles, 32 pairs of men's doubles and 16 pairs of women's doubles.

At several Olympic Games, many athletes took part in singles and doubles events, which made the number of athletes unable to meet the Olympic quota, resulting in being reduced by the International Olympic Committee. The current quota is 172. Since the Sydney Olympic Games in 2, the ITTF has increased the number of doubles without affecting the number of singles, reaching the Olympic quota of 172.

All along, ITTF has taken various measures to increase the number of table tennis events and people in the Olympic Games. However, due to the influence of the International Olympic Committee's "Olympic slimming" plan, this wish cannot be realized for the time being. In addition, ITTF doesn't want a situation in which players from one country compete against each other in the final of the Olympic Games (in the final of 2 events in five sessions, 11 players from the same country compete against each other). Therefore, during the Athens Olympic Games, ITTF officials had extensive exchanges with all parties. In order to increase the excitement of the competition, ITTF proposed to replace doubles with teams, while the International Olympic Committee only put forward one requirement, that is, to strictly follow President Rogge's "Olympic slimming" plan and not to increase the number of contestants, otherwise the proposal would not be passed. Therefore, the ITTF has carefully formulated the plan of "Team Entering the Olympics" and put forward a variety of competition modes, hoping that 12 ~ 16 teams can participate.