Table Tennis Preview
For the second Olympics in a row, the U.S. will send full men’s and women’s table tennis teams to the Games. And they’ll be looking to make some Team USA history in Tokyo by bringing home the country’s first Olympic table tennis medal.
With multiple national team players competing as full-time professionals overseas, there are signs that Olympic history could soon be changing. Both the U.S. men’s and women’s teams reached the quarterfinals of the ITTF World Team Cup in Tokyo in 2019 and have been increasing in team world ranking consistently. As of the June 2021 world rankings, both the men’s and women’s teams ranked in the top 20, and Team USA had individual athletes in the top 30.
Lily Zhang went above and beyond in 2019, being awarded the International Table Tennis Federation Breakthrough Star Award after her sweep of the Pan Am Championships where she won four gold medals, then not long after broke records by placing fourth at the ITTF Women’s World Cup, where she defeated former cup champion Miu Hirano of Japan.
The six-member U.S. team was named following the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Table Tennis in February and March of 2020. Kanak Jha, a 2016 Olympian, is joined by Nikhil Kumar and Xin Zhou on the men’s side, while Huijing Wang and Liu Juan join Zhang on the women’s team. Jha and Zhang qualified via their world ranking while the others won their spots at trials. The international success of these players has raised expectation the U.S. can push for its first-ever Olympic medal in the sport.
Updated on June 21, 2021. For more information, contact the sport press officer here.