Page 1 of 1
Year when chopper blades and rubbers disappeared from table tennis
Posted: July 22nd, 2026, 1:47 am
by Quent
Any idea when production blades and ITTF approved rubbers for away from the table choppers disappeared from table tennis?
Re: Year when chopper blades and rubbers disappeared from table tennis
Posted: July 27th, 2026, 10:03 am
by Rinfarzando
Long pips rubbers were banned at the 1977 Birmingham BGM of the ITTF .
At this meeting ITTF set the maximum allowed pip length limit at 2.00 mm
This is known as the first chopper massacre when a whole bunch of choppers including Liang Geliang, Huang Liang , Zhang Xilin (aka the Magic Chopper) and many female Chinese choppers suffered the wrath of the ITTF
The second massacre o choppers occurred in 1998 when the Durban Aspect Ratio Reduction Regulation was passed .
This resulted in the ban of Feint Long (the Classic version not the dysfunctional useless crap Feint Long 2 & Feint Long 3 that followed).
This was a bigger massacre than the 1977 massacre (if that is even possible) because more than a dozen top pro choppers in top 100 including 2 in top 10 as well as almost all pro choppers & just about all away from the table choppers all used Feint Long Classic
Feint Long Classic was the collateral damage for ITTF banning TSP Curl P1 (the classic version not P1r or P1v that came later).
ITTF & Scholer (the mastermind behind this change) knew all this but went ahead & did it anyway.
It passed by a razor thin margin of 19 Yes & 17 No.
The crazy part is that rumor has it that Scholer actually wanted to pass this at the 1995 Tianjin BGM as a rule change (which requires a super majority of 75% of BGM vote 220+ ITTF members) . But it looked like he was nowhere close to getting that.
So a clever relentless Scholer held a secret EGM in 1998 in Durban and passed this change as not a rule change but a regulation change (requires only simple majority 51% of ITTF Board of Directors and not 75% of 200% BGM member nations) . Truly diabolical
But ITTF has continued to call these long pips as such after 1977 to deceive the choppers
Re: Year when chopper blades and rubbers disappeared from table tennis
Posted: July 27th, 2026, 10:04 am
by Donatos
As far as blades go, I believe even large chopper blades with size about 169 mm head size (let alone REAL oversized blades with at least 172 mm head size) were not available ins standard production sizes in the sponge domain 38 mm ball era itself