Table Tennis Olympic draw reveals Australian athletes' opponents in Tokyo

The draw for the Olympic table tennis tournament was held today in Tokyo, with Australian athletes finally learning their opposition when the event gets underway on Saturday at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.

Seed no.13 Heming Hu and Melissa Tapper will make history as the first Australian Mixed Doubles team to compete at the Olympic Games. The draw matched them up against seed no.8 Emmanuel Lebesson / Jia Nan Yuan of France.

In the men's singles, both Chris Yan and David Powell managed to avoid the preliminary round. The two Australians will start their tournament from the first round against seed no. 47 Ovidiu Ionescu (ROU) and seed no. 34 Pavel Sirucek (CZE) respectively.

In the women's singles, 6-time Olympian Jian Fang Lay will face Daniela Fonseca of Cuba in the preliminary round. Michelle Bromley was given a bye and will make her Olympic debut in the first round, against Natalia Partyka of Poland.

The team event competition will start on Aug 1. In the round of 16, both Australian teams were drawn against seed no.3, with the men's team facing Japan and the women's taking on Germany. 

Competition begins at 10am AEST on Saturday with the Men's and Women's Singles preliminary rounds. The full schedule is available here.

Draw recap:

Mixed Doubles: Round of 16 - AUS (13) v FRA (8)

Men's Team: Round of 16 - AUS (16) v JAP (3)

Women's Team: Round of 16 - AUS (16) v GER (3)

Men's Singles:

• First round: Chris Yan (60) v Ovidiu Ionescu (47)
• First round: David Powell (62) v Pavel Sirucek (34)

Women's Singles:

• Preliminary round: Jian Fang Lay (58) v Daniela Fonseca (65)
• First round: Michelle Bromley (62) v Natalia Partyka (47)