On January 6th, Beijing time, the WTT Star Challenge Doha station opened, with no Chinese team players participating in the first day's qualifying matches, leaving the national table tennis team without any matches on the first day. What netizens and fans are most concerned about is still the self-examination of ITTF and WTT as well as the financial report of WTT. This article introduces the former chairman Thomas Weikert, current chairman Petra Sorling, ITTF Chief Executive Officer Steve Danton, and the current power structure of ITTF to interpret the power structure of the upper management of the International Table Tennis Federation.
Firstly, it should be noted that almost all international organizations in the world are currently controlled by Europeans and Americans. As an international sports organization, the International Table Tennis Federation can be likened to "occupying a mountain as a king" in an inappropriate metaphor. Theoretically, the International Olympic Committee is the superior organization of the International Table Tennis Federation, but the IOC cannot carry out substantive supervision over the International Table Tennis Federation. Legally speaking, the Court of Arbitration for Sport is an institution that constrains almost all international sports organizations, but that is only symbolic. From the perspective of financial situation and organizational management, the International Table Tennis Federation has high autonomy.
Who can become the president of the International Table Tennis Federation?
There have been eight presidents of the International Table Tennis Federation so far, only Ichiyo Oikawa and Xu Yisheng were former world-class players, and Sharara had worked as a coach for the Canadian team early on, which could be considered as a professional background. The elites of the Chinese table tennis world are not very enthusiastic about entering the upper echelons of power in the International Table Tennis Federation. First of all, if you are not proficient in English, many things will not be easy to handle, and it is very difficult to truly gain absolute power in a place dominated by Europeans and Americans.
The presidents or rulers of the International Table Tennis Federation can be roughly divided into two factions: conservatives and radicals. Many previous chairmen simply served out their terms and then left, earning a substantial salary. Sharara managed the International Table Tennis Federation for 15 years, and because he was still considered knowledgeable about the sport, he implemented many rule reforms, all aimed at suppressing the national table tennis team.
German Thomas Weikert served as President of the International Table Tennis Federation from 2014 to 2021. Weikert had previously served as Chairman of the German Table Tennis Association, and taking over from Sharara was not too outrageous. However, Weikert's main job was as a lawyer, and he was not very interested in the affairs of the International Table Tennis Federation. He came to the position of President of the International Table Tennis Federation just to add some gold to his resume, to help him seek higher power within the international sports organization system. After stepping down from the position of President of the International Table Tennis Federation, he immediately ran for and became Chairman of the German Olympic Committee.
Weikert was re-elected for two consecutive terms as President of the International Table Tennis Federation. He had law firms and goals to pursue in Germany, and he did not attend many high-level meetings of the International Table Tennis Federation in Asia. After Weikert was re-elected as President of the International Table Tennis Federation in May 2017, he immediately announced three personnel appointments - Lail Al-Mohannadi continued to serve as Vice President of the International Table Tennis Federation during the new term; Petra Sorling continued to serve as Financial Vice President; and the former Director of the International Table Tennis Federation's Marketing Department, Danton, served as Acting Chief Executive Officer.
The result of the "palace struggle" is that Danton holds real power
Here, another introduction to Steve Danton is needed. He is a powerful figure who grew up within the International Table Tennis Federation. Steve Danton is not a professional player, he graduated from the University of South Australia in Adelaide and joined the International Table Tennis Federation in 2002. Danton's initial position was as an Oceanic Development Officer for the International Table Tennis Federation, followed by serving as Director of the Asia-Pacific Office. In January 2010, Danton was appointed Director of the Marketing Department of the International Table Tennis Federation.
After Weikert's re-election in 2017, the three personnel appointments he announced were essentially handing over the power of the International Table Tennis Federation to these three people. Petra Sorling was previously only in charge of finance at the International Table Tennis Federation, and she was able to become the current President of the International Table Tennis Federation in 2021 mainly because of one thing - in May 2020, Vice President of the International Table Tennis Federation Lail Al-Mohannadi and Financial Vice President Sorling challenged Weikert's leadership ability through an open letter and expressed that they did not want him to continue serving as President of the Table Tennis Federation.
In fact, Weikert was overthrown by the current high-level officials of the Table Tennis Federation. By 2021, he really needed to run for Chairman of the German Olympic Committee and step back from the International Table Tennis Federation, so Weikert completely left at that time.
Steve Danton has been deeply involved in the upper echelons of the International Table Tennis Federation for many years. Whether it was Danton's intention to push Sorling to the forefront while he himself insisted on controlling behind the scenes, everyone can speculate. Starting from the 2021 season, the newly established WTT of the International Table Tennis Federation began to take full responsibility for global table tennis events. In the process of commercializing and marketing table tennis events, the high-level officials of the International Table Tennis Federation felt that they must pay attention to the Chinese market. In 2021, Liu Guoliang was elected as the first vice-chairman of the International Table Tennis Federation. In October 2022, Liu Guoliang was elected chairman of the WTT World Table Tennis Corporation Board at the WTT Chengdu meeting.
Public reports show that the annual salary of the current ITTF President Sorlin in 2022 is $150,300. How much annual salary Liu Guoliang can get from these two international organization positions has not yet been disclosed by the media.
Closing remarks -
In recent years, the International Table Tennis Federation has made money through WTT's commercial reforms, but their 2023 financial statements have not yet been released, which is indeed strange. Related to this incident where Fan Zhendong and Chen Meng were forced to retire is that on September 18 last year, WTT officially announced the resignation of Chief Event Officer Stephen Dacite. The chief event officer is mainly responsible for contacting major players before the competition and organizing everyone to participate. It can be seen that Stephen Dacite must have had many conflicts with the high-level officials of the International Table Tennis Federation in his treatment of front-line players, and he chose to leave because he couldn't continue.
Stephen Dacite graduated from the University of Technology Sydney and is a native of Danton. He previously served as the tournament director for the WTA Women's Tennis Tianjin Open and the Taipei Open in China. Currently, WTT has not announced a new chief event officer, and the person in charge of similar areas in WTT now is Player Relations Director Polona Sehovin. Polona Sehovin comes from Slovenia and graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana.