British Para athletes prepare for Paris 2024 table tennis qualifiers

First of the table tennis qualifiers for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which will be held two weeks after the Paris Games from 28 August to 8 September 2024, begins in Kazakhstan on Friday.

With six months to go until the start of the 16th Pan American Games, Para Table Tennis is entering the final month of qualifying for the Summer Games and British athletes are preparing to travel to Kazakhstan, Italy, Spain and Poland in March in the hope of consolidating or improving their chances of competing in Paris in late August and early September.

European champion Will Bayley has already secured the European regional spot in the men’s Class 7 and will be competing in Kazakhstan. The rest of the Performance Team will be looking for results that will secure their qualification based on their world rankings by the end of March.

“Looking back at a similar moment before previous Games, I believe we are well prepared this year and the team is better prepared than ever,” said British Para Table Tennis Performance Director Gorazd Vecko, who is preparing for his fourth Paralympic Games with the British table tennis team.

In his fourth stint at the helm of the team, he made a comparison about their readiness. “It doesn’t mean that everyone is assured of qualifying, but I think we are in a much better position than we were at the same time before London, Rio or Tokyo,” Vecko added.

Qualification for these Paralympic Games in Paris was tougher than for Tokyo 2020. “It is hard when you see athletes constantly calculating points and positions against the results of athletes from other countries. Sometimes it feels like we’re working in an accountant’s office rather than in sport. I’d say that it’s harder to qualify than to win a medal at the Paralympic Games,” said Vecko.

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“In some classes, only the top two in the world rankings qualify, because there are regional champions, wildcards and winners of the World Qualifying Tournament. It’s too difficult and the ITTF and IPC need to see how to allow more athletes to qualify, because Para table tennis is growing and in some classes there are more than 80 active players but only 10 participate in the Paralympics,” added Vecko, who was awarded an honorary MBE by Her Majesty The Queen last year for his services to Para table tennis.

In team events, these have been replaced by men’s, women’s and mixed doubles, and for the first time, athletes can also qualify based on their doubles ranking. This requires additional complex calculations because, at international tournaments athletes can play doubles with a player from another country and accumulate points separately.

“The system is quite complicated because you qualify as an individual, not as a doubles pair and you can have a world ranking of one or two, but your partner could be ranked five or six, so that doesn’t mean your partner qualifies,” the Slovenian pointed out.

In international competitions you can play with a player from another country, and if you play with a player in the same class who has a similar number of points, you’ll never catch up. So the athletes have to think about who they should play with to get as high as possible in the doubles rankings.

“However, we had really good results in doubles at the last World Championships and although the classes will be slightly different in Paris, we still expect to be world class in Paris and have a great chance of winning medals,” concluded Vecko.

Since taking over as BPTT Performance Director in 2009, he has seen the team win 14 Paralympic medals, including two golds at Rio 2016, while Will Bayley (2014 and 2022) and Ross Wilson (2018) have become World Champions in their respective categories.