Fan Zhendong could play at LA Olympics, but won’t get easy route back: table tennis boss

The head of international table tennis has said she foresees Olympic champion Fan Zhendong returning to fight for gold again in Los Angeles in 2028.\nBut Petra Sorling, president of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), was adamant Fan should qualify for his place at the Games – something he cannot do unless he resumes playing in international events.\nFan stunned table tennis by announcing he was withdrawing from the ITTF rankings last December.\nSpeaking to the Post during the WTT Finals Hong Kong, Sorling said it was difficult for people to understand “the pressure to be the number one and what Fan delivered in the Olympic Games”.\n\n“His challenge was that he wanted to have a break and then still play table tennis, but not on that level,” she said. “Of course, the world rankings will be affected if you’re not playing.”\nSorling said a break from international table tennis would have helped Fan.\n“I think that he found a balance in his life to take this year off like that, and who knows? I foresee that we may see him in LA 2028,” the 54-year-old Swede said.\n“The door was never closed, but there are different ways to qualify, through rankings and also qualification events.\n“You don’t have to play all the events, but just go straight to a qualifier. The North Koreans [who won mixed doubles silver] in Paris were a good example.”\nFan returned to action at club level earlier this year, playing for 1. FC Saarbrucken in German’s Table Tennis Bundesliga. He also won gold in the National Games men’s singles.\nSorling praised China’s coaches for sharing their expertise at a training camp during the ITTF Mixed Team World Cup in Chengdu this month.\n“If China were only coming, winning and leaving, it would have been very negative,” she said.\n“The cooperation was very good, and this exchange helped to improve the sport overall around the world.”\nShe added: “The Chinese players also want to have competition … The knowledge shared over the years has benefited diversity. When we’re looking at the youngsters now, it’s not that China is winning all the medals.”\nThere have been 88 Grand Smash, Finals and Champions events since those top three tiers of World Table Tennis events began in 2021, and Chinese players have won a staggering 72 of them, or 82 per cent. Japan is a distant second, with seven.\n\nAlso a member of the International Olympic Committee since 2023, Sorling remained ambitious about the chances to further grow table tennis, especially with a mixed teams event making its Olympic debut in 2028.\n“We are the racquet sport with the most medal events, six, in LA 2028,” she said.\nTikTok, rather than other racquet sports, showed the way to engage young people, Sorling suggested.\n“The next generations don’t naturally love sport, so how do we attract them?” she said. “I neither see pickleball, padel, nor tennis nor badminton as competitors. I see TikTok and non-sports as more of a competitor to table tennis.\n“But I think that in table tennis, we are very well equipped because we are really performing well in terms of the entertainment industry. This is not only sport.”\n