Defaults at the World’s Table Tennis Championships

Esposo being defaulted because of the coachs' negligence is unacceptable. Anong ginawa nila sa China kundi mamasyal at sinayang lang ang taxpayers money sa pagpunta nila doon..tsk, tsk tsk..this is sad and a mismanaged oraganizationa dn poor leadership of TATAP.

After reading this post on tatap.ph, and reading what was written on the tatapusa.com website, it's pretty clear to me that the person that made this post has an axe to grind against the current TATAP President. Personally, I don't give a hoot about all this, and I'd like to stay away from all the politicking. (I never dreamt that sports could be so political).

But i will make a few observations, if I may. Some of it may be hurtful, and cause people to react defensively, but I hope that the people concerned accept it in the spirit that it is given - as constructive criticism, to help improve the state of Table Tennis in our country.

If anything is clear from the recent , a good shot at the top 32 (in the world) is certainly possible. The near-success of Indonesia's Men's Doubles Team of David Jacobs and Yon Mardiono against China's Wang Liqin and Guo Yue (who eventually won the Gold) gives us a glimpse of what is acheivable. The Indonesian duo have been training in China for the last seven months, and according to RP's Julius Esposo, their play used to be at about the same level as the Philippine team's.

Here's what we need to do:

1) Clearly a good playing court is necessary. I did not realize what a big difference the proper flooring can have on a player's game, until I actually played a few games on good grippy Taraflex. When you play on this flooring, you actually feel that you can chase down any loose ball w/o getting hurt. If you want to understand how it is possible for Kim Taek Soo or Ryu Syung Min to be so fast, you need to play on a Taraflex court.

2) Exposure to a wide variety of services is absolutely necessary. It's not possible for us to do well at the World Championships, if our players have to learn how to return a serve they've never seen before in less than 30 minutes. There's no other way around it. If a player wants to be good, he'll either have to train abroad, or at the very least, join a good number of foreign tournaments. It doesn't help if you have all the skills, but can't return service.

3) Better logistical planning. The post above makes a big stink about Esposo's defaulted game. While Julius is clearly at fault, there are many things that could have been done to avoid this problem.

The most important thing would have been to arrive at the tournament site in China a few days BEFORE the tournament. This would have given the players the chance to know who their opponents would be, when their games would start, at what table(s) their games will be held. They'd be able to scout the opposition, figure out where to have lunch to make it back in time for the next game. If they had to take the shuttle from the playing area to their hotel and back, they'd be able to know the shuttle schedule beforehand, so they would be able to allocate enough time to avoid defaulting. They'd have had a chance to acclimatize, get used to the bounce and feel of the tables, as well as the lighting.

As it turns out, it wasn't just Julius who defaulted - there were two other women's games that were also defaulted. I believe that the coaches were only made aware of their games at around 1130 pm Friday; the games began at 9 am the next day! They did not even see the playing area until after 8 am Saturday. The area is huge - there is a stadium about the size of Araneta Coliseum that holds 9 tables, and then there is a annex hall that holds 24 ADDITIONAL tables PLUS 16 practice tables. It is humungous. It took me about 15 minutes to make it from one table to another table (partly because I was given wrong directions, partly because there were no signs to tell me which way to go, partly because I had to go through an X-ray queue to go from one part of the playing hall to another, partly because there was some mix up about my badge and the Chinese were refusiing me entry into some parts of the playing area). Ironically, the officials will default you if you are not at your table in 15 minutes!

In fact, I did make it a point 1 month before the tournament to try and convince TATAP to change their flight schedules - to arrive in China at least 2 days before the tournament. The response was - we don't have the money - "will you pay for the player's additional expenses"? IMHO, this is not the right attitude to take, but I ignored that and tried to reason that, as it was, they already had enough funds. TATAP was paying $220 per room+board (for two players). I, on the other hand had found a room for $80 in a FAR better hotel, situated only 2 minutes from Shanghai Gymnasium (it would turn out that the Swedish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese teams all stayed here). In fact, there was another hotel - the Sports Hotel situated only 3 mins from the playing area - that was charging $55/room. The TATAP response was that they had no choice. If they didn't book at the ITTF rate, they would not be allowed to play. Try as we did, it was impossible to convince them that this was not the case.

Technically, I find it hard to understand how the ITTF can bar entry into the tournament to a team that chooses to stay in its own hotel. More likely, what ITTF meant to say was that "if you do not book at the $220 rate, we will not give you 3 free rooms for six of your players". (ITTF was doing this to encourage a lot of nations to participate. As it was, this was the biggest world's championship yet, with 145 countries participating). This is the more likely scenario, and I think if there had been more due diligence, these would have been our options:

1) have all 13 team members (10 players + tatap president + sec-general + anna) stay at the $55 hotel for 6 nights (arrive 2 days early, stay for 4 days of the competition). This would have cost $385/night for 7 rooms. Food would cost about 150 yuan per day (per person), or about $240/day for the entire contingent. That'll come to $625/day or $3750 for 6 days.

2) Pay the $220 ITTF rate and avail of 3 free rooms, pay for 4 rooms, and stay for 6 nights (arrive 2 days early, stay for 4 days of competition). The cost comes to $810/day (because the 1room w/ 1 person will cost $150) or $4860 for 6 days.

Instead, TATAP stayed for 8 nights at the ITTF rate and spent $6480. TATAP was under the impression that they had no choice but to stay the full 8 nights (april 30 - may 7). In my book, that's about $2730 that could have been put to better use.

In fairness, TATAP did try to explore the options I suggested to them, but only after they had arrived in China, and only after the ITTF had forced TATAP to pay the bill IN FULL the very night they arrived. But by then it was way too late.