Paralympics 2024: A guide to Para-table tennis at the Paris Games
China play a shot on their way to one of their 16 golds in Tokyo
- Published
Key information
Dates: 29 August-7 September
Venue: South Paris Arena 4
Gold medals on offer: 31
Para-table tennis schedule, events and classifications at the Paralympics
The sport follows the rules set by the International Table Tennis Federation with only slight modifications to the serving laws for athletes competing in wheelchairs. Each player aims to hit the ball over the net on to the opponent's half of the table and wins the point if they fail to return it successfully.
A match is played over the best of five sets, with each won by the first player to reach 11 points. If the score in a set reaches 10-10, though, a player must establish a two-point lead to win it. The server changes every two points.
Competitions take the form of preliminary rounds followed by knockout stages.
For Paris, team events have been revamped and replaced by men's and women's pairs and mixed doubles events.
Athletes with a range of impairments can take part in the sport and there are 11 different classifications: 1-5 for those competing in wheelchairs, 6-10 for those who play standing and 11 for standing athletes with a learning disability.
Athletes are assessed and allocated a number between 1 and 10, depending on their functional ability - reach, muscle strength, locomotive restrictions, balance and ability to grip the bat. In the wheelchair category, those competing in class 1 have the highest level of impairment with class 6 being for standing athletes with the highest level of impairment.
Which athletes will be competing for GB?
Rio gold medallists Will Bayley and Rob Davies lead the British team's hopes.
Bayley, who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2019, recovered from a serious knee injury sustained on the programme to win class 6 silver in Tokyo but wants to be back on the top of the podium again while Davies missed Tokyo through injury.
And there will be lots of interest in 14-year-old Bly Twomey who trains alongside Bayley in Brighton and who only made her international debut last year but has already enjoyed plenty of success.
Who are the other challengers?
China have been the trailblazers for many years and one of their many stars, Liu Jing, will be aiming to win a history-making fifth successive singles title when she competes in the women's C1-2 event.
Liu has also won five team medals since making her debut in Beijing in 2008 but will face a tough challenge from Korea's Seo Su-yeon.
But for longevity, it is Slovakia’s Jan Riapos and Spain’s Jose Manuel Ruiz Reyes who are the stars with both set to make their eighth Paralympic appearance, having made their debuts in Atlanta in 1996.
Riapos has four golds a silver and a bronze from his class 2 events while Ruiz Reyes has three silvers and two bronzes in class 10.
And Brazil's Bruna Alexandre and Melissa Tapper of Australia come to the Paralympics having already experienced the Paris competition atmosphere by representing their nations at the Olympics.
Did you know?
Table tennis was part of the Paralympic movement before it was played at the Olympics. It was one of the sports included in the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960 but it was the Seoul Games in 1988 when it made its Olympic debut.
ParalympicsGB Tokyo 2020 medals
Seven - two silver (Will Bayley and Bayley/Paul Karabardak) and five bronze (Karabardak, Thomas Matthews, Jack Hunter-Spivey, Ross Wilson/Aaron McKibbin/Billy Shilton and Megan Shackleton/Sue Bailey)