#table tennis

[alnair-jpg]

If you’re keeping track, it will be no surprise that Leo Valdez is up next for the Olympics AU!

(He’s got to be one my favorites so far)

[o-kurwa]

[viejospellejos]

Esto es absolutamente INCREÍBLE:

[gameraboy2]

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)

[brasildaily]

Bruna Alexandre of Brazil during the women's table tennis singles match in the team round of 16 against South Korea at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the South Paris Arena in Paris on August 5, 2024. She is the first Paralympic athlete to represent Brazil at the Olympics.

[tlmtwelve]

Prompts: Hunter, Echo, ping pong/table tennis

[katieannwrites]

Paris Olympics: guys in glasses doing sporty things.

[fishybone]

Slay The Princess AU where everything is the same but the the final confrontation between Quiet and Shifty is to have them play a game of ping pong and each turn is the different Princess you’ve met

[music-wrestling-nascar-fangirl]

[vintage-sweden]

Sailors playing table tennis, 1943, Sweden.

[pencilnewt]

in light of all the turmoil surrounding the nhl's 4 nations face off, i've been thinking a lot about the political nature of international sports. of course they've always been political! but sometimes they've been more of a force for good.

my favourite example of this is 'ping-pong diplomacy,' through which the US and China thawed their relations in the 1970s and moved towards detente. it's a really interesting element of cold war history, and the conversations among hockey fans over the last few days made me want to draw it.

[copperbadge]

The UEFA European Championship, the "Euros", is a major soccer championship, with viewership second only to the World Cup. It's starting up this week and I decided to put a few bets on since a number of the Handsome Lads of AS Roma are playing in it along with my favorite Fire player, so I signed up with an online sports book that has a relatively user-friendly app.

(I can hear the "Sam, gambling can be super addictive" comments now and I agree but I promise you of my impulse control issues, gambling is not one of them. I am betting in $2 amounts for fun.)

One of the weird dualistic tensions of online gambling is that by law they have to do allllll this stuff to remind you that it can be addictive and help is available while also doing everything they can to suck you in deeper; social media has nothing on sports betting. There's a clock that tells you how long you've been in the app, which is meant to make sure you take breaks but is actually very stressful because I keep thinking it's timing me like I'm taking an exam; on the other hand it won't let you sort your bets by date so you can easily see what's coming next and then log off.

But I'm not here to talk about manipulative apps or betting or even footie. I'm here to talk about...

table tennis

Because one way they keep you on the site is to offer limited live streaming of sports you can bet on in real time and i miei amici, at the moment there is a table tennis championship tournament in progress.

It's like watching some kind of absurdist performance art unfold. You can see plenty of finals matches in nice venues with audiences and high res filming at YouTube, but what I am guessing are the prelims are played in a small rather dimly lit room with a single fixed camera at a distinctly "surveilling the inmates" angle. There's a game table, the two people playing, and a nearby desk where the referee sits. And then they play table tennis with the focused determination of military snipers.

This is a screenshot of what is actually a nicer video than the streams at the sports book (which doesn't let you screenshot) but you get the idea.

Don't get me wrong, I respect table tennis as a sport requiring skill and dedication I don't personally possess. It's not the ping pong of it all that gets me. It's the weird utilitarian grimness of the visual, like it's footage from a military experiment in a dystopian thriller film. It's what I imagine the filmed aesthetic of the Russian Sleep Experiment creepypasta would be.

I'm not betting on the games but I'm not gonna lie that I haven't watched a few matches. These men certainly come to win.

[pucktyreshannism]

✨nerds✨ in Olympics Paris 2024 (so far, that i watch):

1. Stephen Nedoroscik - Men's Artistic Gymnastics

2. Félix Lebrun - Men's Table Tennis

3. Baptiste Addis - Men's Individual Archery

i mean- look at himmm

[viejospellejos]

Técnicamente ha ganado el punto

Enviado por: @unmundo

[gameraboy2]

Vintage arcade ads

[brasildaily]

Catia Oliveira and Joyce Oliviera of Brazil win the bronze medal in the Women's Table Tennis Doubles WD5 on day two of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at South Paris Arena on August 30, 2024 in Paris, France.