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ITTF president expects more mixed-nationality pairs

Xinhua, May 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

One day after China's Xu Xin and South Korea's Yang Hae-un wrote history by winning the mixed doubles title, world table tennis chief Thomas Weikert expressed his hope for more mixed-nationality pairs to appear on the world championships.

Besides Xu/Yang, top-ranked man Ma Long and women's player Chen Meng and Li Xiaodan also teamed up with non-Chinese.

Ma and his German partner Timo Boll lost to top Chinese duo Zhang Jike/Xu Xin in the second round.

"It's a good promotional thing. We should keep doing this, not only Chinese and German, also from other European countries," said the president of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).

"The first thing is to minimize the gap between Asia, especially China and others. Chinese are dominating because they are so good, I think European and others need to work harder. Also the education from the strongest country is necessary," he added.

ITTF signed affiliation agreement with the Asian Table Tennis Union in Suzhou on Thursday. It meant that all continental federations have signed similar accords.

"We worked together very closely on development (of table tennis), and China is the top nation in terms of this," the president said.

Weikert aims to raise table tennis to a "world top five sport".

"We are now the biggest association in term of member associations. We have 222 members, so the goal is to bring table tennis all over the world," he said.

Weikert has met the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach to discuss the possibility of mixed doubles to appear in 2020 Tokyo Olympics as the fifth table tennis event.

"Agenda 2020 is interesting for us. The Agenda says that it wants mixed events, and we want the fifth event to appear on 2020 Olympics, which is the mixed doubles."

On the Suzhou world championships, Weikert said he was impressed.

"I had a meeting with players yesterday, and there were no complaints about competition conditions, so it should be a big compliment for the organizers," he said. Endi