Balletic hits and bicycle kicks: Teqball comes of age on the Asian Games | Sport

In Bangkok’s Sports Science Centre, Jutatip Kuntatong is airborne, executing a gravity-defying bicycle kick that slams the ball on to the curved desk with a pressure that echoes all through the fitness center.

She is making ready to symbolize Thailand on the Asian Games, which begin on Saturday, however six years in the past she had by no means even heard of teqball, the game of which she is now the world champion.

“I had no idea at all what sport is this,” the 28-year-old says on the sidelines of the crew’s coaching session. “I just said yes.”

After taking out the singles and doubles titles at the newest world championships in Transylvania in December, she is now the No 1-ranked girl on the planet within the nascent sport.

“It feels like a dream because everything happened so fast,” Jutatip says. However, it isn’t simply her 151cm stature which helps her obtain the acrobatic feats which have powered her success. Many of her signature strikes come from a centuries-old south-east Asian sport that has given the Thai crew its edge: Sepak takraw, typically known as “foot volleyball”, which has lengthy been widespread in south-east Asia

Teqball was invented somewhat over a decade in the past in Hungary, when two buddies began taking part in soccer on a ping pong desk, earlier than happening to create the signature curved desk the sport is performed on.

The new sport is rapidly coming into the mainstream. This weekend it’ll debut on the Asian Games in Japan, after its historic inclusion on the European and African video games, with ambitions to be an Olympic sport by 2032.

Teams from 16 nations can be competing on the competitors, which may also debut padel and digital taekwondo, a non-contact sport using virtual reality headsets.

Teqball is scored like ping pong – with matches made up of singles or doubles video games. Players might hit an ordinary soccer ball with any a part of their physique besides their palms. They are allowed a most of three touches earlier than returning the ball to the opponent, with no participant allowed to make use of the identical physique half consecutively.

The rule banning use of the identical physique half makes the game “very intricate”, says László Vajda, the secretary common of the International Teqball Federation.

Vajda says that of the 147 nationwide federations world wide, Thailand is the strongest nation in the mean time.

The Hungarian inventors of teqball launched it as a mixture of desk tennis and soccer, however Thai audiences see within the sport a completely completely different sport.

“We reckon that it’s not football – the skills and the way you use the moves is more like sepak takraw, says association secretariat of the Teqball Association of Thailand major general Piyapat Jarunpong.

Like teqball, sepak takraw is played without the use of hands or arms – relying heavily on leg strength and controlling the ball through kicks.

So when Thailand decided to take up the new sport, they called upon players like Jutatip who had been training for years in sepak takraw.

Somsak “Joe” Duangmuang, the nationwide Teqball crew’s coach, was a sepak takraw coach for over 20 years, and a former nationwide sepak takraw crew participant himself.

“It’s quite exciting for me, that I see an opportunity to bring a new challenge to our athletes. It’s expanded a new area of training with the skills that we have,” Somsak says.

Like most sports activities, completely different kinds are rising based mostly on nationwide options, László Vajda says.

“In Brazil, it’s a lot of chest and head.
In central Europe – especially Romania, Hungary, Poland – because of local sports, it’s a lot of side smashes,” he says.

“In Asia, especially south-east Asia, because of sepak takraw, you have a lot of bicycle kick when they jump up backwards, and they smash with their feet up.

“Africa and the Middle East it’s very athletic – amazing jumps and very technical, very football-ish.

“It’s quite amazing to see when for example there is a Brazil/Thailand, or a Serbia/Thailand game very, very different styles clash,” Vajda says.

The Thai affiliation hopes the Asian Games will current a possibility for extra folks within the area to study concerning the sport, which can assist the affiliation’s objective to get recruit extra youthful gamers.

Piyapat says: “It’s quite a big step forward. It’s a huge leap, to be honest.”