World Team Championships 2012

bluebucket wrote: It's because of the massive cultural differences between the USA and Australia Jim and Boz see this differently. In the States there have been recent racial upheavals and lots of things are still taboo even if they shouldn't be. In Australia you can and will be called a Russian, German, Greek or Asian if that's what you are even if it's been generations since your family moved. Even races that are fully integrated into the wider society like Australian Greeks and Italians will more often than not call themselves by their race rather than where they were born and so they should. A Pine tree in my garden doesn't become a Eucalypt just because it's planted there. If Jim's kids were living in Australia they would be all over "I'm a Russian" and they would be dam proud of it

Well US men's lost to Ecuador 2-3...Wang lost both his matches and Lander lost one and won one with Hugh winning his. Both lost to Alberto Mino who beat Wang and PPP from Canada in the pan am games.

Which raises the question, home come Ecuador produces better players than the US or Canadian system when they have like 1/20th the population and people in the US are ten times richer on average?

kenneyy88 wrote: Jonan wrote: Well US men's lost to Ecuador 2-3...Wang lost both his matches and Lander lost one and won one with Hugh winning his. Both lost to Alberto Mino who beat Wang and PPP from Canada in the pan am games. Which raises the question, home come Ecuador produces better players than the US or Canadian system when they have like 1/20th the population and people in the US are ten times richer on average? My friend is from Ecuador. They have table tennis in schools and they have interschool competitions.

Well we have training centers in the US and a college league and a robust tournament system, especially in west coast.

On the flip side, the women's team Lily Zhang has won 2 of her 3 matches, her only loss being to 2010 European women's champion Pavlovich.

Jonan wrote: Well US men's lost to Ecuador 2-3...Wang lost both his matches and Lander lost one and won one with Hugh winning his. Both lost to Alberto Mino who beat Wang and PPP from Canada in the pan am games. Which raises the question, home come Ecuador produces better players than the US or Canadian system when they have like 1/20th the population and people in the US are ten times richer on average?

Maybe being richer is exactly why... I think that the overall teenager culture is now so much geared toward playing the sports where you can (allegedly) make huge bucks... it is well known though that an average basketball or football or soccer or tennis player can barely scrape a living (I am not averaging over NBA or NFL, I am averaging over all who intend to become professional players, starting with college freshmen).

That however doesn't stop anyone as everybody wants to think that they will be an exception, the star with billion dollar salary. And table tennis cannot show them even one-two US players who make a comfortable living being professional TT players (not talking about money made by coaching).

Exactly because our standard of living (and aspirations) is so high, kids will not go into TT.

Not to mention there are only two colleges in the whole country offering a TT scholarship. Pathetic...

amateur wrote: I don't know about the others, but Alberto Mino has had strong support from his federation throughout his youth and played in many international events. He also spent two years in the French leagues. (Please don't compare NCTTA with this, it's great but not a competitive league.) http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Mino And he even has his own website: http://albertomino.com/

Aaah, yeah, Mexico of course did much of the same with Marcos Madrid, sent him to the French league as well. That higher level of consistent competition seems to be the key, seldom ever do any of the US national ever play at pro tour events. Madrid has done very well, despite the rest of his team not doing so much, winning 5 of his 6 matches even though Mexico has lost all 3 of their matchups.

JimT wrote: Jonan wrote: On the flip side, the women's team Lily Zhang has won 2 of her 3 matches, her only loss being to 2010 European women's champion Pavlovich. Lily did great! She beat Daniela Dodean (wr-100 player, Romania) and Alexandra Privalova (BLR) - she just might break wr-100 after this tournament if she keeps it up.

Russia as always showed us how a team that has three WR-30 level players can lose 0-3 (!!!) to a team with all three players outside of WR-100 (one of them even outside WR-200 and he still beat the best ranked player on Russian team (Floras vs Smirnov).

Those guys really know how to let their fans down...