Table tennis: Asian Championshipsin Macau next month

The territory will host the 20th edition of the Asian Table Tennis Championships, which will place between February 23 and March 1 at the Macau Dome.
The draw for the team event is slated for February 21 but the first round will only start two days later, according to the schedule released by the Asian Table Tennis Union (ATTU). The six best teams in the last Asian Championships will play a knock-out system.
After February 26 the most anticipated games will begin, with the launch of the individual events, which include male and female singles and doubles, as well as mixed doubles competition.
In total Macau will welcome more than 230 players from 30 countries and territories. China is the overwhelming favourite, with Chinese players occupying the first five spots in the latest male and female ranking.
The MSAR will put forward two teams with seven members each. In the individual events, there will be 10 local players in the male and female singles competitions and one duo in the male, female and mixed doubles.
The event was originally slated for Lebanon, from September 12 to 18 this year. But in August the Lebanon Table Tennis Federation decided to cancel the competition “due to the security deterioration in their region”.
Lebanon’s neighbour Syria has been engulfed a brutal crackdown on protest in which the United Nations says over 2,700 people have already been killed.
ATTU eventually decided to postpone the championships “to a later date in a different location”.
The Macau Table Tennis Association has submitted a bid to host the championships and won. The decision to award the organisation of the event to the MSAR was made at an ATTU executive committee meeting held in Shanghai last year.
The last edition of the biennial tournament was held in Lucknow, India, in 2009 with the participation of over 500 players and federation representatives from all over the world.
Macau has already hosted the 2008 and 2009 finals of the International Table Tennis Federation’s Pro-Tour, which pits together the best players in the world. But the territory is out of the Pro-Tour schedule for 2011.

V.Q.