Breakfast Olympians: Stephen Chittenden
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Most of us have played table tennis, just not to Olympic level. For many it was ping pong in school common rooms or scout huts, and often involved chasing an off-white orb under nearby furniture or retrieving it from a dog's mouth.
But at a national level it's different. It's a proper sport. Top table tennis players are athlete-magicians who can make a ball move in strange ways and shoot off in unexpected directions.
They are full time professionals with sponsors and they wear special trainers. Yet even the British number one Paul Drinkhall struggles to convince people that he plays the sport for a living.
"When they ask what my job is and I tell them I play table tennis, they say "Come on, what do you really do?", he says.
Paul and his fellow development squad members Liam Pitchford and Gavin Evans are coaching me in a huge hall at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. This is where Britain's top players hone their skills ahead of the Olympics, although when we meet none of them even knows how the 2012 team will be picked, let alone who will make it.
I watch Paul and Liam, the British number two, rallying. Each stands several metres behind the table. The ball dips and swoops like a diving bird. This is not a sport with which I am familiar.
My turn. I try to serve, but my effort is slow and flat compared with their wizardry. So I attempt a return off Liam's innocuous-looking serve. But his shot is loaded with so much spin the ball simply pings off my bat in every direction but the right one.
Very soon I am reduced to the status of a sitting duck. Liam fires a succession of balls at me, working me from side to side behind the table. This is hard work that needs physical fitness and a degree of co-ordination I simply do not possess.
Then it turns out I should be disqualified because I am wearing a white shirt that makes the ball harder to see for the opponent. What a lucky break! So I retire from the sport and leave it to the sultans of spin in their special trainers.
Stephen Chittenden is a 5 live reporter
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Comment number 1.
At 14:17 22nd Jul 2011, carrie wrote:Heard this. Not a great sport for radio. I suppose it is better to say "fantastic' because the actual idea of getting non sportsmen to try out something different is essentially a good one, it is the verbal delivery that has failed the listener.
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