On April 22, Beijing time, the WTT World Table Tennis Federation officially announced the time and place of the 2024 Finals. According to the news released on the official website, this tournament will be held from November 20th to 24th, and the venue will be Fukuoka, Japan, the hometown of Japan's world runner-up Hina Hayata, and the men's and women's competitions will be combined and will no longer be split like the previous edition.
Since Japan is a strong rival of the national table tennis, they will definitely do their best to fight at home this time, and take advantage of the geographical advantage, this national table tennis must make difficult preparations to meet the arrival of the year-end test.
The finals are an important event in the table tennis world, once known as the fourth major competition after the Olympic Games, the World Table Tennis Championships, and the World Cup, but due to the impact of the epidemic and the reform of the table tennis competition system, the mode of holding has changed a lot in recent years, and it has now been assigned to the management of the WTT World Table Tennis Federation, and the women's and men's finals in 2023 were held at the end of last year and the beginning of this year.
As mentioned earlier, the 2024 finals will be combined into one event and will be held in Japan at the same time, so this time the players of each association do not need to "divide their forces" to participate in the battle, and the men's and women's teams can advance and retreat together.
It is worth mentioning that in December last year, the women's finals were held in Japan, and the venue was in Nagoya, although it was changed to Fukuoka this year, Japan won the right to host the men's and women's finals at the same time, which shows that they have more interest in the event, so they have increased their investment, which is not a good thing for the table tennis world.
According to the arrangement, the tournament will be played at the Kitakyushu City General Gymnasium in Fukuoka, and Fukuoka official Kiyotaro Hattori and Kitakyushu City Mayor Kazuhisa Takei spoke to welcome table tennis fans from all over the world.
It is worth mentioning that Fukuoka has also cultivated many excellent table tennis players, including the current Japanese table tennis sister Hina Hona - at present, Hina Hayada is the number one opponent of the national table tennis women's team, and her strength is very strong.
Of course, the finals are already at the end of the year, and before that, all the energy of national table tennis will be focused on the preparation for the Paris Olympics, so let's wish everyone good results in France!