TABLE TENNIS: Australia will join the table tennis arena again as the mixed team event kicks off tonight and is available to watch live at http://nanjing.ovp.olympic.tv/ .

South Australian Vy Bui and Victorian Dominic Huang will join forces in the team event for Australia and are excited to be playing together.

“It is obviously different to just playing for yourself because you are playing as a team now, you have a teammate you have to support so I will really enjoy cheering for Vy as she wins while I’m sitting on the bench and when we play doubles it’s like our first time together so it will be different and a really good experience to learn and maybe we might even win a few games, that is the ultimate goal,” Huang said.

In the mixed event both Bui and Huang will play an individual match each and then back up for the doubles event, with the round determined by the team who wins the best of the three matches.

Just like the singles competition, the first stage is a group stage where the top two teams in the round will continue onto the playoffs for the gold medal while the bottom two teams will secure a position in the consolation draw.

Having lost each of their singles matches earlier in the week, Bui and Huang are determined to improve on their skills and hopefully win a match in the team event.

“The experience of playing with the world’s best players will always impact you in a positive way because you want to be like them, you want to play better and compete against them,” 16-year-old Huang said.

“From the singles competition we were able to compete against those top players and now we again get to compete against the world’s best so we kind of know the level of standard that is required to compete and to actually push them a bit so we can put up a fight against them.”

“My goal is to at least win a single so it doesn’t put that much pressure on Dominic,” 18-year-old Bui said.

“It gives me more self confidence knowing Dom will be there and it is like a teammate effort so it is more fun and supportive.”

In their first game of the group round the Aussie duo will take on Czech Republic tonight at 2000 (2200 AEST) at the Wutaishan Sports Gymnasium in Nanjing.

Tomorrow they will come up against Singapore in the afternoon and finally in the evening they are scheduled to clash with a mixed nation team of Portugal and Romania.

Bui and Huang who both finished equal 25th in their singles competition are happy with the progression of their mixed team group draw, saying they are ready for the challenge.

“It is good preparation, [the matches] get harder each time so we can learn from what we’ve done wrong and then put it into practice in the harder matches,” Bui said.

Australian coach Jens Lang says the pair has been looking good in training.

“Both of them usually don’t play mixed doubles together so it is a new pair so it is important that you practice the moving patterns and that they get a feeling for the distance of the table and everything and that is what we practiced this morning and they looked good,” he said.

Having had a day’s rest Lang says the pair is energised and pumped to perform for each other tonight.

“I believe as an individual athlete you perform better if you feel like you are part of something bigger ... we will see but hopefully it is going to have a positive effect on their performance tonight,” he said.

“Tonight we play Czech Republic, one of the better teams in Europe and again we want to be realistic so the chances of getting away with a win are really slim but maybe we can challenge them really hard... and hopefully we can just take as much as possible out of the experience and if we get away with a win that’s fantastic.”

Laura Judd

olympics.com.au

@AUSOlympicTeam