SUPER TT STAR RISING FROM SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK

Only two days to go until 2021 TTA Tour hits Sydney on 29 May 2021 at Sydney Olympic Park, all of Australia’s top athletes are looking forward to this first major table tennis event since 2019.

A massive 288 individual event entries have been accepted across 16 events, with competitors from six states/territories across Australia. It includes 9 of top 10 National Senior Men's players and 8 of top 10 National Senior Women's players.

The last major table tennis event held at Sydney Olympic Park was the 2014 GAC Group ITTF World Tour Australian Open from 21 to 23 May, 2014. 13 years old Japanese player Mima Ito won the Gold Medal for the Under 21 Women’s Singles and the Bronze Medal for the Women’s Open Singles. We witnessed a super table tennis rising star at Sydney Olympic Park.

Mima Ito (伊藤 美誠) was born on 21 October 2000 in Japan, and is the youngest super table tennis star in the world. At only 20 years old in 2020, she was ranked 3^rd in the world for ITTF Senior Women.

Mima won a bronze medal in the Women's Team event at the 2016 Summer Olympics when she was only 15 years old. Often termed as the 'greatest threat' to Chinese table tennis dominance, Mima has the highest winning rate against Chinese players in the history of women's table tennis. She currently has a winning record against several top Chinese players, including world champion Shiwen Liu, former world No. 1 Yuling Zhu and world junior champion Tianyi Qian. Her signature playing style entails lethal shovel serves, strawberry receives, fast short-pimpled backhand punches and flat forehand smashes.

Mima’s best position and achievement in ITTF can be summarised as:

• ITTF Seniors Rank. No 2, November 2020
• ITTF Under 21Rank No 1, April 2017
• ITTF Juniors Rank. No 1, April 2017
• ITTF Cadets Rank. No 1, December 2015

In March 2020 at the Qatar Open, Mima recorded a 4–0 win against the reigning Olympic champion Ning Ding in the semifinals. Notably, she won the third set 11–0, making it the first time a non-Chinese player won a set 11–0 against a Chinese player at ITTF events.

At the age of ten, she became the youngest person to win a match at the Japanese senior table tennis championships and the youngest person to win an ITTF Junior Circuit tournament. At eleven she defeated the player ranked 50th in the world at the time. At the age of 14, she moved in June 2015 for the first time into the Top 10 in the world rankings, reaching World Rank No. 9.

In March 2014 she, together with Miu Hirano, won the doubles' title at German Open. They were both 13 at the time. Thus they became the youngest-ever winners of a doubles competition in the ITTF World Tour.

In December 2015 the 2015 ITTF Star Awards, a Breakthrough Star Award presented by TMS International was given out to Mima Ito.

In January 2018, she won the women's singles at the All Japan Championship for the first time by defeating Miu Hirano in the final. She also won the women's doubles with Hina Hayata and the mixed doubles with Masataka Morizono and achieved a triple crown.

The triple crown is the third in the history of the All Japan Table Tennis Championships and she was the youngest to achieve this feat at the age of 17 years old.

In January 2020, it was announced that Ito Mima would be part of the Japanese women's table tennis team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, together with Kasumi Ishikawa and Miu Hirano.

President of TTNSW, Tony Aduckiewicz said “TTNSW welcomes the TTA Tour - Sydney at Sydney Olympic Park. We are excited to support TTA to organize this highest level table tennis event in Australia at Sydney Olympic Park. We are looking forward to seeing more super table tennis stars rising from TTA Tour - Sydney at Sydney Olympic Park. Your dreams will start from here.”