Do you think you could beat an Olympic table tennis player?

The Canberra Times

Table tennis is still regarded by many Australians as a backyard game rather than an Olympic sport. But the speed of the hits and the agility of the players surpass many other Olympic sports.

Transcript

00:00That's the best and the worst thing in table tennis, that people have the tendency to think

00:14that it's only a social sport because they have tables in the backyard or in the garage

00:19and they used to have a kid.

00:21My recommendation would be that find a local club, go there, get a little bit of coaching

00:27and you will understand that the sport is much, much bigger than you think.

00:45It's a sport, so I just love it, like for fitness, for the community, meeting people,

00:51enjoying it.

00:52What about you Sol?

00:53Yeah, table tennis for me has been a great journey.

00:56There are two takeaways that I've picked up over my course, they've been table tennis

01:04for life, live long to play ping pong.

01:10Yes, I mean the most common thing that I describe table tennis is like you try to play chess

01:33and you run 100 metres sprint at the same time, so you have to make the decision super

01:39fast, sometimes the ball is coming faster from the other side of the table, three times

01:43faster than the blink of the eye, so we don't have enough time to react.

01:47The speed of the game is extremely high, so in an elite level the ball travels with 110,

01:54120 k's per hour and that means that the distance from one side to the other of the

02:01table is less than three and a half metres, so the reaction time must be extremely fast

02:07and that's why we're using table tennis a lot of the muscle memory.

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