The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Gavin Rumgay may have missed out on a place in Great Britain’s table tennis team, but still aims for the top in ping-pong
Perth star will switch bats after missing out on Tokyo 2020
The Olympic dream may be finally over for Perth’s Gavin Rumgay but that has not stopped him yearning for a place at the top table.
The 14-time Scottish champion had an outside chance of making Tokyo 2020 as the fourth-ranked player in Great Britain but, having failed to qualify a team, Rumgay knows an individual place is now beyond him.
At 35, he realises there will not be another opportunity but by turning the tables in recent weeks he has been given a new lease of life.
Over recent winters, Rumgay has grown accustomed to switching bats. He has come into his own at the World Championship of Ping-pong – an event where players use the old-fashioned sandpaper bats – and reached new heights at last month’s event at Alexandra Palace in London, winning a bronze medal.
He points out that he is the first Scot to win an individual medal at a World Championship in table tennis after Helen Elliot won a medal in doubles back in 1950.
While the tournament has been created for television and is the brainchild of Barry Hearn’s Matchroom Sports, Rumgay argues that it has become hugely competitive since its inception.
“It was just nice to win a few matches in a row and play some decent stuff,” admits the Perth player.
“I’d reached the quarter-finals before but that was when the event had just started up. It’s been going now for nine years. Once the Asian countries are involved, it’s very tough to be one of the best in the world.
“For the first three or four years, they maybe had three or four representatives but it has all changed now. Their qualification event had something crazy like 20,000 to 30,000 players for eight places.
“In Scotland, we had about 100 in total in qualifying over the course of two or three tournaments and that was reduced to two players. So of the top 64 that were there, the players from China were their very best.
“Over there, they have centres that are dedicated just to ping-pong and that’s why they have dominated the sport for the last 40 or 50 years.
“I now want to try and become world champion in the next two or three years, that has to be the goal.
“My world ranking has gone up from 13 to seven. The top eight players get automatic qualification into next year’s tournament which is great for Scotland as it opens up a place for another Scottish player which means we’ll have three players next year.”
Rumgay is not getting ahead of himself. For all the Chinese players at last month’s tournament, it was an Englishman, Andrew Baggaley, who won the event for the fourth time. And he is 37 this month, albeit from a medal-laden table tennis career which saw him win six Commonwealth Games medals, including two golds.
The Scottish No 1 is not turning his back on table tennis – he will be chasing a 15th national singles title next month – but ping-pong looks like an increasingly attractive alternative with Matchroom Sports looking to host an open event in Saudi Arabia later this year and an invitation to the Chinese Sandpaper League on the back of his medal.
“I’ve had 20 years of playing professional table tennis and there’s not enough money in the game if you’re not in the top 50 in the world,” Rumgay points out.
“I managed to get as high as 111 in March 2018 and I’m still ranked around 150.
“But you need around £30,000 a year to play in the Pro Tour properly, especially as you have to go to North Korea, Nigeria and Australia.”