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NATIONAL OLYMPIC
COMMITTEE OF TURKMENISTAN

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Table Tennis

Table tennis started as a genteel, after-dinner game, but is now a fast, high-tech sport. It also has the most participants of any sport in the world.

HIGH SOCIETY ORIGINS

It is thought that upper-class Victorians in England invented table tennis in the 1880s as a genteel, after-dinner alternative to lawn tennis, using whatever they could find as equipment. A line of books would often be the net, the rounded top of a champagne cork would be the ball and occasionally a cigar box lid would be a racket.


EVOLUTION

In 1926, meetings were held in Berlin and London that led to the formation of the International Table Tennis Federation. The first World Championships were held in London in 1926, but the sport had to wait a long time before it was given its Olympic debut at the 1988 Seoul Games.

  • Title:
    Turkmenistan Table Tennis Federation

    E-mail:
    TTTF@inbox.ru

    President: 
    Agamyrat Allanazarov 

    • Table tennis was banned in the Soviet Union from ca 1930 to 1950. The sport was believed to be harmful to the eyes.
    • Table tennis became a medal Olympic sport in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.
    • Early table tennis paddles were normally made of cork, cardboard, or wood, and covered with cloth, leather or sandpaper.