The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee announced in March 2020 that the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games would be postponed until 23 July to 8 August 2021.
This decision was taken in light of the spread of COVID-19 worldwide and to best protect athletes, officials and fans alike.
These Olympics will still be called Tokyo 2020 despite taking place in 2021.
The Paralympic Games, originally due to start on 25 August 2020, will now take place between 24 August and 5 September 2021.
The ITTF Executive Committee then decided to adjust the qualification pathways accordingly.
The 2020 Olympic Games – the Summer Olympics – are being held in Tokyo, Japan from the 23 July to 8 August 2021 and the table tennis events are being played at the Tokyo Metropolitan gymnasium.
The table tennis events are: mixed doubles, women’s singles, men’s singles, women’s team event, and men’s team event.
The number of athletes who can take part in the 2020 Olympic Games table tennis events is limited to 86 men and 86 women.
Therefore, teams and players have to qualify for the Games, and then they have to be approved and nominated by their National Olympic Committee (NOC), before their participation can be confirmed.
In addition, a maximum of three players, per gender, per NOC, can take part.
Each NOC can only have a maximum of three players (per gender) in the team events; two players (per gender) in the singles events; and one player (per gender) in the mixed doubles event.
So let’s take a closer look at the qualification system for the table tennis events at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
A maximum of 86 men and 86 women can qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics table tennis events, and all players have to then be approved by their National Olympic Committee.
Maximum 2 players per National Olympic Committee (NOC)
| Players (Men) | NOC | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominated by NOCs with a qualified team (32 players) to be announced in June 2021 |
||
| 1 | Fan Zhendong | China |
| 2 | Ma Long | China |
| 3 | Dimitrij Ovtcharov | Germany |
| 4 | Timo Boll | Germany |
| 5 | Lam Siu Hang | Hong Kong China |
| 6 | Wong Chun Ting | Hong Kong China |
| 7 | Tomokazu Harimoto | Japan |
| 8 | Koki Niwa | Japan |
| 9 | Chuang Chih-Yuan | Chinese Taipei |
| 10 | Lin Yun-Ju | Chinese Taipei |
| 11 | Ahmed Saleh | Egypt |
| 12 | Omar Assar | Egypt |
| 13 | Kanak Jha | USA |
| 14 | Nikhil Kumar | USA |
| 15 | Mattias Falck | Sweden |
| 16 | Anton Kallberg | Sweden |
| 17 | Simon Gauzy | France |
| 18 | Emmanuel Lebesson | France |
| 19 | Marcos Freitas | Portugal |
| 20 | Tiago Apolonia | Portugal |
| 21 | Aleksander Karakasevic | Serbia |
| 22 | Zsolt Peto | Serbia |
| 23 | Andrej Gacina | Croatia |
| 24 | Tomislav Pucar | Croatia |
| 25 | Darko Jorgic | Slovenia |
| 26 | Bojan Tokic | Slovenia |
| 27 | Hugo Calderano | Brazil |
| 28 | Gustavo Tsuboi | Brazil |
| 29 | David Powell | Australia |
| 30 | Yan Xin | Australia |
| 31 | Jeoung Youngsik | South Korea |
| 32 | Jang Woojin | South Korea |
| Africa (4 players) African Qualification Tournament Tunis, Tunisia 27-29 Feb 2020 |
||
| 33 | Ibrahima Diaw | Senegal |
| 34 | Adam Hmam | Tunisia |
| 35 | Olajide Omotayo | Nigeria |
| 36 | Larbi Bouriah | Algeria |
| Asia (6 players) Western Asia Olympic Qualification Tournament (1 place) Amman, Jordan 23-26 Feb 2020 Asian Qualification Tournament (4 places) Olympic Rankings (1 place) |
||
| 37 | Ali Alkhadrawi (West) | Saudi Arabia |
| 38 | Lkhagvasuren Enkhbat (East) | Mongolia |
| 39 | Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (South) | India |
| 40 | Nima Alamian (Central) | Iran |
| 41 | Clarence Chew Zhe Yu (South East) | Singapore |
| 42 | Sharath Kamal Achanta | India |
| Europe (6 players) European Games (1 place) Minsk, Belarus 22-29 June 2019 European Qualification Tournament (5 places) |
||
| 43 | Jonathan Groth (European Games) | Denmark |
| 44 | Panagiotis Gionis | Greece |
| 45 | Ovidiu Ionescu | Romania |
| 46 | Pavel Sirucek | Czech Republic |
| 47 | Alvaro Robles | Spain |
| 48 | Kou Lei | Ukraine |
| Latin America (4 players) Latin American Qualification Tournament Rosario, Argentina |
||
| 49 | Brian Afanador | Puerto Rica |
| 50 | Horacio Cifuentes | Argentina |
| 51 | Alberto Mino | Ecuador |
| 52 | Gaston Alto | Argentina |
| North America (1 player) North American Qualification Tournament Canada 7-8 March 2020 |
||
| 53 | Jeremy Hazin |
Canada |
| Oceania (1 player) |
||
| 54 | Yoshua Shing | Vanuata |
| World Singles Qualifying Tournament (4 players) Doha, Qatar |
||
| 55 | Lubomir Jancarik | Czech Republic |
| 56 | Bence Majoros | Hungary |
| 57 | Wang Yang | Slovakia |
| 58 | Kirill Skachkov | Russia |
| Invitation (1 player) |
||
| 59 | Dodji Fanny | Togo |
| ITTF World/Olympic Ranking (6 players) June 2021 |
||
| 60 | Liam Pitchford | Great Britain |
| 61 | Quadri Aruna | Nigeria |
| 62 | Robert Gardos | Austria |
| 63 | Daniel Habesohn | Austria |
| 64 | Kirill Gerassimenko | Kazakhstan |
| 65 | Paul Drinkhall | Great Britain |
| Mixed Doubles (16 pairs) | ||
| 1 | Patrick Franziska (with Petrissa Solja) | Germany |
| 2 | Wong Chun Ting (with Doo Hoi Kem) | Hong Kong China |
| 3 | Jun Mizutani (with Mima Ito) | Japan |
| 4 | Xu Xin (with Liu Shiwen) | China |
| 5 | Lin Yun-Ju (with Cheng I-Ching) | Chinese Taipei |
| 6 | Omar Assar (with Dina Meshref) | Egypt |
| 7 | Eugene Wang (with Mo Zhang) | Canada |
| 8 | Sharath Kamal Achanta (with Manika Batra) | India |
| 9 | Jorge Campos (with Daniela Fonseca-Carrazana) | Cuba |
| 10 | Hu Heming (with Melissa Tapper) | Australia |
| 11 | Lee Sangsu (with Jeon Jihee) | South Korea |
| 12 | Lubomir Pistej (with Barbora Balazova) | Slovak Republic |
| 13 | Stefan Fegerl (with Sofia Polcanova) | Austria |
| 14 | Ovidiu Ionescu (with Bernadette Szocs) | Romania |
| 15 | Emmanuel Lebesson (with Yuan Jia Nan) | France |
| 16 | Adam Szudi (with Szandra Pergel) | Hungary |
