International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Committee has announced that Mixed Doubles has been added to the Table Tennis Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020.

The Mixed Doubles event means that table tennis will have five Olympic gold medals on offer: Men’s singles, Women’s singles, Men’s team, Women’s team and now Mixed Doubles.

ITTF’s President, Thomas Weikert, said:

The ITTF is extremely happy to have Mixed Doubles added to the Olympic Programme.

Table Tennis obtained very high television and social media numbers at Rio 2016, so we feel that a fifth gold medal was deserved.

At last week’s World Championships, a sellout crowd of 8,000 people watched the Mixed Doubles final, so we know that the public has an appetite for this exciting event and it will be a huge success at Tokyo 2020.