2024 Paris Olympics: Why isn't table tennis more popular in the US?

TEAM USA

Lily Zhang prepares to serve in a recent match.

If you've watched any of the table tennis matches in the Paris Olympics, you know that this is not a game for the slow of foot or weak of heart. It's fast. It's intense.

But even though the game has been around for a lot longer than pickle board, you don't see cities and schools spending thousands of dollars building facilities for the sport.

FYI: Follow all the AANHPI athletes at the Paris Olympics.

Watching the Olympics, one can't help but notice the majority of the US team is made up of Asian Americans. Badminton is another sport that suffers the same kind of ignominious reputation.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions that we’re not true Americans. I’ve experienced a lot of comments from people or even on social media, where people were like, ‘Of course, the U.S. imported these people from China,’” says team member Lily Zhan in an NBC article. “They don’t understand we were born here. We were raised here. We grew up here. We’re just as American as any other athlete on the team.”

READ the entire NBC article here.

Unlike others sports, there is no institutional support for the sport. For those players who want to expand their skills beeyond the rec room or family basement, it is necessary to get a private coach. So it's a matter of family finances and thatnarrows the pool of potential athlete and expanding the sport's popularity.

TEAM USA

The USA's  table tennis team, including coaches and players is seeking its first Olympic medal.

Three members of the US team is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed of table tennis and where there are clubs and foundations to help foster and train up and coming players.

“I don’t know if it’s because we have never been able to medal in the sport,” Zhang tells NBC “But then it becomes a cycle. If we don’t have the funding, it’s hard to improve and grow the sport to be able to medal. We can never really burst out of that bubble.”

Indeed, NBC's Sunday coverage failed to even mention the results of the table tennis team, much less showing any of the matches.  

FYI: Olympic coverage the 2024 Paris Olympics, will broadcast live across NBC, USA Network, E!, CNBC and GOLF Channel. Peacock is the official US streaming home, streaming every sport and all 329 medal events.

Zhang is ranked 29th in the world and is considered the USA's best female table tennnis player the country has ever produced. 

Zhang, who is from Palo Alto, California, is 28-years old. She realizes that time is not on her side.

“This could be my last Olympics,”Zhang tells ther hometown newspaper, the Mercury News.  “I’m just going to try to savor every single moment out there.”

Sunday, she began what could be her quest for a medal by beating her Lebanese opponent Mariana Sahakian 4-0,  

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