Former Twillingater involved in Beijing Olympics

TWILLINGATE - Bruce Burton, a former Twillingater and for some time now with the Education Faculty at Memorial University, was scheduled to leave on Saturday past for China where he will be an official with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games.

A long time aficionado and active participant in the sport of table tennis both as a player and as an official, Mr. Burton will serve as the North American representative on a six-person jury panel at the Olympics.

The jury, he explained, is the final court of appeal for any dispute that arises in table tennis during the actual games. Any dispute prior to the games will be dealt with before the events start, he explained. In addition, the actual games are handled by the best officials and referees in the world so that the role of jury is very rarely called into play - but they must be in place nevertheless. The jury will consist of six members, one from each representative continent - Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, Latin America and North America.

Mr. Burton's association with table tennis (often called ping pong) goes back to his younger days in Twillingate.

"It was at the old Marshall Hall (former church hall for Twillingate South United) as a member of a youth group that I first came in contact with the sport," he said in a telephone interview last Thursday, just two days before he was to leave for China. "Rev. Manuel Saunders was the leader of the group and he got the group of boys to play ping pong. And I fell for it.

"I played recreation table tennis at high school in Twillingate but it wasn't until I started university that I really got bitten and started playing competitively."

Since then, Mr. Burton has had considerable exposure as a player and as an official. He captured the provincial singles championship back in the 1980's and for several years - or "a countless number of times" as he phrases it - he was on the provincial doubles championship team.

As an official, he's been at various times the president of Newfoundland Labrador Table Tennis serving a total of some 14-16 years. Currently he is completing his 14th consecutive year as the national president of Table Tennis Canada. Next spring he will attend meetings in Japan as the international vice-president for North America.

And travel? For every year since 1993 Mr. Burton has travelled outside Canada from one to four times per year either to meetings or to tournaments. He is due to go back to China in March for the World Championships in table tennis, to Argentina in September and to Madrid, Spain, in December for meetings.

And the 2008 Olympic Summer Games will be his sixth trip to China.

China is at an elite level in table tennis, he explained, because they treat it as such an important sport, even more so than we treat hockey.

But being the Olympics also makes a difference, he said, and even though he already had been on the jury for the 2000 Sydney Games, being in Beijing for the most exciting event in sports carries with it a hype that is difficult to describe.

Table tennis is slated to be played in the second half of the scheduled games that will end with the closing ceremonies on Aug. 24. Mr. Burton leaves for his return trip home on Aug. 26.