Exclusive | Hong Kong to host elite table tennis event featuring world’s best next year, WTT head says
CEO Steve Dainton says his organisation wants to be among first to hold an event at city’s newest venue which is set to open in early 2025
Hong Kong will host the world’s best table tennis players in a top-flight tournament next year, the head of the sport’s governing body has told the Post.
In an exclusive interview during the WTT Champions event in Macau on Sunday, Steve Dainton said his organisation wanted to be among the first to put on an event at Kai Tak Sports Park, which is expected to open in early 2025.
Dainton, the CEO of World Table Tennis, said they were in talks with local officials about staging either a champions-level tournament, or the season-ending finals at a venue he called “perfect for being able to host a major WTT event”.
The Queen Elizabeth Stadium, Dainton said, “wasn’t quite big enough for what we wanted” while the Coliseum “wasn’t too bad but didn’t have a lot of auxiliary parts”.
This year’s finals will be held in Fukuoka, Japan, after previous editions in Singapore, China and Qatar. Although the event features the “best of the best”, Tony Yue Kwok-leung, president of the Hong Kong China Table Tennis Association, said the local governing body’s preference was to host a champions event.
“We would welcome either event with open arms, but the top 32 players’ pool at the champions event would mean our players have better chances of making the cut,” he said. “On the other hand, the [season-ending] finals are limited to the top 16 singles players and the top eight pairs.
