Our Blog - Paris Olympics - Table Tennis

Table Tennis was our first Olympics event, so it gave us a view into how the rest of the week would go. The "event guide" told us to be at the event location 90 minutes in advance, but that seemed a little excessive. We arrived about an hour early to the Paris Arena South, and definitely 30 minutes was more than enough time for the future events. We took public transportation there, catching the subway (metro) just out the front door of our B&B and then making 1 change and getting off at the Porte de Versailles.

I have to give a hand to the organizers here ... the signage and volunteers with directions were really, really good. Coming out of the station, there are tons of volunteers with fingers pointing you in the correct direction. At this location, there are multiple venues and there were additional volunteers telling people which building and lots of signage as well.

While we didn't wait in the long line to get a picture right in front of the Olympic rings, I tried to get a good selfie with the rings in the background.

We were there for Round 3, and you can see the winners of Round 1 indicated moving forward in the brackets to Round 2. We were watching both men's and women's singles today.

A view around the arena before things started to give you an idea of the setting. There was a large screen that we weren't able to see that seemed to be showing the tv coverage, and the large screen that we could see that had the scores for all 4 matches. There were 4 tables with games going on at the same time, and here you can see the setup with 2 referees (across from each other) and then back-left is one of the 2 people to go pick up the balls at the end of the point. The 2 people up front (bottom of the pic) are the 2 coaches, who came out in advance of the players. You can also see the 2 red paddles on the table (one side is red, the other is black). They also came on (both in French and in English) and explained the rules of the game. When we first arrived (which was early), the lights on the floor were dim but then it came back up when the referees, volunteers, and coaches entered.

A video around the arena ... they played lots of upbeat and somewhat recent music to try to set an ambiance, I guess. Best to view this one with the sound on :-)

There are lots of these types of signs as well ... talking about drinking water, reusing things, putting trash in the proper bins, etc .. all with the Paris 2024 mascot.

Speaking of the mascot, the name of the Paris 2024 mascot is Olympic Phryge, based on the traditional small Phrygian hats that the mascots are shaped after. The Phrygian hats have been a symbol of freedom throughout French history, and are a common reference for French people as a metaphor for freedom and as a symbol of the Republic. The national allegorical figure, Marianne, is normally shown wearing the cap, and if you want to see this, you can click the following link to see Marianne in a painting from Delacroix, wearing the red Phrygian hat (from Wikipedia).

And then we got started. On the big screen, they showed the athletes entering and then walking over to their specific table.

The match is the best of 7 games, each game goes to 11 points but you have to win by 2. Each player serves twice and then it changes regardless of who wins a point. The serve is a bit interesting, and you will see in the various videos that the serves are different based on player. You have to hold the ball in your open palm, behind your end of the table and toss the ball at least 6” straight up, striking it on the way down. The ball must hit your side of the table and then the other side. I'll point out one of the more interesting serves that we saw in a bit.

This first ladies match was between Sweden's Lidia Bergstrom (ranked 21st) in yellow against China's Chen Meng (ranked 2nd). As you can imagine, it was a little lopsided although it actually looked like Bergstrom had a shot after she took the first game 11-8. However, it didn't last long as the Chinese came back to win the next 4 games to take the match.

This match was Deni Kozul of Slovenia against the 10th ranked Togami Shunsuke of Japan. This was another case of the lower ranked (in this case, unranked) player took the first game. This match went to 6 games although some of the games weren't very close (11-3 for example). This is one of the serves where they throw it quite high ... the Slovenian in the blue shirt. The 2nd video is a little further out because I wanted to show the Slovenian fan who was in front of us a couple rows ... every point that Kozul won, this guy jumped up and waved his flag.

The 3rd match that was going on at the same time was 9th ranked German Dimitrij Ovtcharov against Brazillian Vitor Ishiy. This one looked like it was going to be a very short match, with the German taking the first 3 games. But the Brazilian came back to win game 4 13-11 before losing 3-11 in the 5th game. Check out the serve from the German guy .... he crouches VERY low ... almost down under the table ... for his serve!

This video shows the end of a match and the applause and noise. Who woulda thought that ping pong fans could be so loud!

A few things here ... this match has Brazil's Hugo Calderano, ranked 4th, against Spain's Alvaro Robles, who is ranked 21st. Another interesting thing is between points ... it is very common for each player to dry their paddle-hand between points on the table just up near the net. You can see this at the very beginning. The Brazilian (in yellow) also has the most unique pre-serve routine and serve that I saw while I was there ... look how high he throws the ball on the serve! And as I typed this, Hugo Calderano (who won this match 4 games to 2) lost in the bronze medal match against France's Félix Lebrun. A little bit of brotherly revenge perhaps, Calderano eliminated Félix's older brother Alexis in an earlier round.

An action shot with the ball just over the net in the match between Germany's Nina Mittelham against North Korea's Pyon Song Gyong (in red). This was an upset, as Nina was ranked 11th and the N. Korean was not ranked. This match went all 7 games but I actually thought it would end in the middle of the 2nd game when Mittelham went off the court for a medical timeout. But she came back to win game 2 before losing the next 3 games. She then evened the match by taking game 6 only to fall 7-11 in the 7th and deciding game.

Another end-of-match video with Poland's Natalia Bajor winning against Portugal's Fu Yu, also in 7 games. She probably had the best reaction after winning of the 8 matches that we watched during our session. This match had lots of long rally's, the longest being 19 strokes in that 7th and final game.