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Article: The PM-in-waiting puts table tennis on the political agenda
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- February 7, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2001 Evening Standard - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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ACCORDING to those who love the game, this week's 64th English
Open Championship is "the Wimbledon of table tennis".
It is certainly the sport's biggest international event in
Britain. Yet judging by the setting, you would be hard pressed to
realise it.
The nominal venue is Chatham, not a town globally renowned for its
glamour.
But ask locals for directions to the feast of table tennis in
their midst, and they gaze back blankly. It turns out the Open is
taking place three miles south at Buckmore Park, a nondescript
leisure centre where the M2 meets the A229 amid a tangle of
roadworks.
Clues to this fact are non-existent.
You have to be actually inside the leisure centre before the Open ...