The New Rating System Discourages Participations
The ITTF Para Table Tennis started to adopt the new rating systems for point calculations for all tournaments this year. I do not know whether this new idea has been thoroughly consulted among disabled players for its meanings, implications and influences to us. But surely as I expected the disabled tournaments’ participants would drop, particularly in the part of the top players.
According to the ITTF Para Table Tennis, we need this new system because our tournaments need to be streamlined with able-bodied’s. However, they were not aware that there’s completely basic difference between able-bodied and disabled tournament which made the rating system an obstacle to the development of disabled table tennis.
Firstly, the able-bodied table tennis tournament always had prize of money. It means that players would gain monetary reward when he wins the tournament. Secondly, the able-bodied table tennis tournament got flourish media coverage such a way that players could gain fame from them which guaranteed the commercial value. Thirdly most able-bodied players are financed by their nations to participate the tournament.
In before, the disabled players could gain nothing from tournaments, i.e. no monetary reward, but points if he wins. To the worst he gains zero points if he does not win any matches in the tournament. Presently he would usually win points if he wins. But simultaneously he takes risk to lose points if he loses. To the worst he loses a lot of points if he loses with a lower rank player. The most unfair is that the top player may have zero point if he wins the players with lower rank. It also becomes more unworthwhile to participate tournament if he is self-financed to join because he may pay to lose points.
Every player has a wise calculator in their heart. Thus, many players, particularly the top ones, for above reasons, join less tournaments this year. I also foresee that some tournaments this year need to be canceled because of insufficient participants.