Before the Olympics, rubbers on the racket were the talk of the table tennis world especially after India’s Ayhika Mukherjee, Sreeja Akula and Manika Batra had stunned China’s top paddlers.Reportedly, China had a camp on how to play against those using pimple rubber. In the Olympic singles competition, Sreeja put up a solid fight against Sun Yingsha, the silver medalist from Tokyo, in a pre-quarter final clash. She squandered nine game points in the first two games and couldn’t recover after that. Manika was looking geared up for the team event after her loss to Japan’s Miu Hirano in singles.…
At Paris 2024, he played a bit part in China winning the table tennis team gold. For the uninitiated, following the Games on television, he was the unassuming silent one of the doubles pair. He mostly sat on the bench with a blank expression. When the coach spoke to the stars during break, he stood next to them looking clueless as if the Mandarin they spoke was Greek to him. But before and after the match, the aloof boy with dreamy eyes would get treated like a rock star. Girls would confess their love from stands, kids would cry for…
They won’t be winning Olympic gold medals any time soon, but a team of researchers from Google’s DeepMind have developed an AI-driven robotic system. It matches the capabilities of an amateur-level human tennis player and which can handily outperform beginner-level players. “Achieving human-level speed and performance on real world tasks is a north star for the robotics research community,” the team wrote in a study titled, “Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis,” published Thursday. “This work takes a step towards that goal.” Their “learned robotic agent” is designed to achieve human-level performance in accuracy, speed, and adaptability to its…
Benj Edwards / Google DeepMind On Wednesday, researchers at Google DeepMind revealed the first AI-powered robotic table tennis player capable of competing at an amateur human level. The system combines an industrial robot arm called the ABB IRB 1100 and custom AI software from DeepMind. While an expert human player can still defeat the bot, the system demonstrates the potential for machines to master complex physical tasks that require split-second decision-making and adaptability. “This is the first robot agent capable of playing a sport with humans at human level,” the researchers wrote in a preprint paper listed on arXiv. “It…
Timo Boll: “It was hard emotionally” Speaking after the final match of his international career, he said, “It was hard. During the match, and immediately after the match, you’re feeling some disappointment, but to receive such feedback from the audience afterwards, it was really special and overwhelming. It was hard emotionally.” Boll lost 3-1 in his final singles match for Germany and 3-0 in his last doubles match, playing alongside teammate Qiu Dang, at the start of the day. “I stayed here for quite a long time,” Boll explained, “I think I’m still the oldest No.1 in the world. I’ve…
“I still hope that they can face the wins and losses of athletes on the field correctly. I believe if you’re following sports, you should have the mindset to bear and endure these outcomes,” Chen said after China beat Taiwan 3-0 on Wednesday to advance to the team semi-finals.”After all, the charm of competitive sports lies in this aspect.”The tension among Chinese fans favouring different players has been evident both at the South Paris Arena and online, with each athlete having their own fan club.Sun Yingsha, 23, who won gold in mixed doubles, has one of the largest followings among…
August 6, 2024 PARIS – As an Olympic fan from a very young age, I have already got over my crush over any sporting “hero”, because a “hero” maybe fickle and forgotten as time passes by. But this time in Paris I think I have come across one. At the age of 61, Ni Xialian, the oldest table tennis player, never felt out of place in Paris. With neat movements when taking advantage, and agile leaps to relieve her emotions when losing a point, the former Chinese world champion paddler, now representing Luxembourg, gave out her full strength against her…
Few countries have lorded over a sport as China in table tennis. Every time, since the sport was introduced in the Olympics in 1988, China has swept the men’s and the women’s team titles. They’ve won 64 of the 124 medals awarded in TT since 1988 (including the nine awarded in Paris so far). More impressively, they have won 35 of the 40 golds, roughly 88%.But China’s presence in global table tennis goes way beyond its physical boundaries.And one is not talking about countries like Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore and others which have Chinese ancestry.Trawling the list of paddlers…
Japan was edged 3-2 by Sweden in the men’s table tennis team semifinals at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday, missing its chance to book a final against either China or host France. After beating Australia 3-0 and Taiwan 3-1 in the previous two rounds, Japan led 2-0 against its European foe before losing the next three games in a back-and-forth contest at South Paris Arena. Japan will now have a chance to add a bronze medal to the silver and bronze it won at the last two Summer Games. Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto reacts after the team’s defeat to Sweden in…
This is the latest in Beijing’s crackdown on what it calls “toxic” celebrity culture.Previously, China has seen the banning of celebrity rankings, the restructuring of fan clubs, and the regular scrubbing of “harmful” content from fan pages.In the last few days, the state-run Global Times newspaper published several articles denouncing “fan culture” in sports. One of its reports said “numerous Chinese people” were now worried about “the visibly aggressive fan culture that threatens to erode the sporting world”.In addition to inflammatory comments directed at sporting personalities, authorities have also criticised fans who cheer loudly or use flash photography during matches,…