Table Tennis World Championships in China postponed

Contrary to previous plans, the Table Tennis Team World Championships in Chengdu, China, will not take place next April.

The “SID” received the confirmation for the postponement of the title fights on Tuesday less than two months before the start of the World Cup scheduled for April 17 from the world association ITTF. According to reports, the organizers are having problems with the effects of the corona Pandemic.

A new date for the tournament has not yet been set. However, according to the current status, the organizers are trying to move the World Cup to the last quarter of the year. The deadline for the corresponding decision is not known.

Due to the postponement of the Team World Cup in China, the title fights for teams cannot take place as planned for the second time in a row due to the effects of the corona Pandemic. In 2020, after the outbreak of the corona virus, the ITTF had already postponed the Team World Cup awarded to South Korea’s Busan three times and ultimately even to 20021 before the tournament was finally canceled. However, last fall Busan was awarded the contract to host the 2024 World Team Championships on the guidelines for the Individual World Championships in Houston / US state of Texas.

The postponement of the tournament in China had hardly been indicated recently, not only because of the hosting of the Winter Olympic Games in the Chinese capital Beijing. The date for the first World Cup in China since 2015 was only publicly announced by the ITTF in January. At the same time, it had already been announced that the World Cup, like the Olympic competitions in Beijing, should take place within a closed Bubble.

If the World Cup, which is designed to last a total of ten days, is made up for in the current calendar year, there is a risk that the competition calendar will be overloaded in the second half of the year. The World Cup in Qatar (November 21 to December 18) is also a problem for alternative plans: ideally, the ITTF wants to avoid the mega-event in the Gulf.