By Xinhua,
Beijing : World table tennis governing body ITTF has announced the seedings for the Olympic Games team events, which are introduced for the first time in the Olympic history.
Both the Chinese men’s and women’s teams have been seeded top in the 16-team events respectively, according to the release by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) here Friday.
Germany, South Korea and Hong Kong are among the top four in the men’s team, while Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea women’s teams have been placed as the second to fourth seeds. Top four seeded teams will not play games between each other until the semifinals.
The teams play best-of-five matches in each contest with each match being the best-of-five games. A contest consists of two singles matches followed by a doubles match, and, if necessary, two singles matches.
A special team ranking list, taking into consideration only the players qualified from each team, was prepared on the basis of the ITTF July 2008 world rankings to establish the seeds for the round robin stage.
The ITTF decided to include the men’s and women’s team events instead of the doubles in the Olympic format four years ago, after the Athens Olympics.
The table tennis competitions of the Beijing Olympics are to start Aug 13.
Draws for men’s and women’s team events round robin stage will be made next Thursday before the singles draws on Aug 11.
Following are the seedings of the Olympic table tennis team events:
Men’s Team 1. China, 2. Germany, 3. South Korea, 4. Hong Kong, 5. Japan, 6. Chinese Taipei 7. Singapore, 8. Austria, 9. Croatia, 10. Greece, 11. Sweden, 12. Russia
13. Brazil, 14. Nigeria, 15. Canada, 16. Australia
Women’s Team 1. China, 2. Singapore, 3. Hong Kong, 4. South Korea, 5. Japan, 6. Germany
7. Netherlands, 8. Austria, 9. United States, 10. Croatia, 11. Spain 12. Poland, 13. Romania, 14. Australia, 15. Dominican Republic , 16. Nigeria