Elite table tennis will return to the UK for the first time since 2018 this week, as the Copper Box hosts World Table Tennis’ Star Contender.
A $300,000 (roughly £223,000) prize pool will be contested across five tournaments over six days, culminating in the finals on 26 October.
Both the men’s and women’s singles will include 48 athletes, whilst the men’s, women’s, and mixed doubles tournaments each boast 16 teams.
The event comes as a precursor to the World Team Table Tennis Championships in April 2026, which will mark 100 years since its first edition, also hosted in London.
The Copper Box, an indoor arena purpose-built for the 2012 Olympics, last hosted international table tennis during the 2018 International Table Tennis Federation World Cup.
The Star Contender event director John Timms told the Londoners: “I think it’s a great opportunity to refresh and look at how we can develop with World Table Tennis.
“This has been a major investment in table tennis, as it’s the first international competition in England for a while and we need to use table tennis to engage and make a difference.
“We just want to make sure our events have a very positive impact on sustainability.”
World number four Tomokazu Harimoto headlines a men’s tournament that includes four English wildcards, whilst his sister Miwa is the lead woman in the competition at world number six.
In the qualifying draw will be 21-year-old Bristolian Louis ‘the Beast’ Price, a content creator with Youtube channel TableTennisDaily, who boast 450,000 subscribers.
He said: “I think the event is going to be massive – we’ve never had something quite like it in London.
“I used to play football but once the weather was too bad and my dad invited me to play table tennis with him instead.
“I don’t think I was too keen on it, but step by step, I fell in love with it.
“It was the experience of watching the 2018 ITF World Cup in London that pushed me to want to become a better player.”
The new generation of players will benefit from the construction of Sheffield’s Elite Training Centre, which was completed in 2024.
Juniors are encouraged to share the hall with senior players in a system modelled on more traditionally successful European nations.
“I made a big decision to go to Germany when I was 16 and it definitely made a big impact,” agreed Price, who made his debut for Bundesliga side ASC Grunwettersbach last year.
However, such changes are likely to take time to manifest into competitive results on the world stage, as England number one and London native, Tin-Tin Ho, understands.
She said: “I don’t think we are going in as favourites, so it’s a good opportunity for us to just play and have no pressure.
“I would love to perform well because some of my friends and family will come and watch.”
In 2020, the 27-year-old became the first British woman to qualify for the Olympics in her own right since 1996.
The world number 270 has won three Commonwealth medals and completed her medicine degree at Nottingham University last summer.
Since then, she has been able to tap into the methods of the traditionally dominant Eastern Asian countries.
Ho said: “I watched the Asian athletes quite a lot on YouTube and I recently had a training block in China for a week and then in Korea.
“I try to learn from the European and the Asian side.”
Another player to watch will be Anna Hursey, who became Wales’ youngest ever senior sporting representative in 2017, aged ten.
Now 19 years old, the world number 75 will only be looking up the rankings.
The event runs from 21 October to 26 October and tickets can be found here.
Featured image credit: ETTU
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