Bayley and Davies lead GB squad to France as World Championships preparation steps up

In the training hall in Sheffield, on a late August afternoon, I sat in the farthest row — the seat I always choose when I want to watch a young athlete longer than people usually do. From there, the steady bounce of the ball on the blue table sounded clearer than the voices. A girl, the youngest in the group, stood at the corner of the table, racket in her left hand, repeating a service motion I had counted at least forty times that afternoon. Nobody clapped. There was no crowd. Only the ball and an adult standing beside her, watching in silence.

That girl is Bly Twomey, class 7 — one of the youngest names on the list of twelve athletes that Table Tennis England has just announced for the trip to France. That silent moment taught me something the scoreboards never say: a team's season does not begin at a match. It begins on an afternoon nobody watches.

Beneath the dust of time, a gem has just revealed its first light.

From September 12 to September 16, the Great Britain para table tennis squad will be in Yvelines, France, for the ITTF World Para Elite — a tournament within the World Table Tennis elite system, reserved for highly ranked para table tennis athletes. The purpose of the trip lies in building momentum, not in lifting a trophy.

To understand why such a tournament is worth following, it must be placed on the right timeline. In November, in Thailand, the World Para Table Tennis Championships will take place. That is the biggest target of the British team's year. Everything happening between August and November — the training camp, the elite event in France, the recovery process — serves one week in Thailand.

The list of twelve athletes announced this time is the result of a long selection process. At the front are two names already familiar to para table tennis fans: Will Bayley, world champion in class 7, and Rob Davies, European champion in class 1. Alongside them are Jack Hunter-Spivey, and younger faces such as Bly Twomey in class 7 and Billy Shilton in class 8.

For newcomers to the sport, the classification system of para table tennis is the first barrier. Athletes are grouped into categories from 1 to 9 depending on their functional impairment, where lower numbers tend to correspond to more severe impact. A class 1 player such as Davies competes in a wheelchair, with strictly limited range of movement, and almost the entire match revolves around precision placement and reading spin very early. By contrast, a class 7 player such as Bayley or Twomey can stand and move, so their matches carry more of the shape of conventional elite table tennis: fast rallies, short footwork to create space, and services designed to seize initiative from the third ball.

The difference in class is not merely technical. It determines how an athlete must build an entire career. In class 1, every point is the result of thousands of hours training feel in a confined space, where the margin of error is a few millimetres. In class 7, physical capacity and recovery speed become the decisive variables. One list of twelve names, yet in reality it is twelve entirely different development paths, and the coaching staff must prepare for each one separately.

Based on my experience following matches over many years, what makes para table tennis a special archaeological environment is that here, you cannot judge an athlete by a single match. In elite table tennis for non-disabled players, a competitor can make a leap within one season. Here, every small change — grip, foot angle, wrist-force adjustment — needs months to crystallise into competitive results. I once followed a young athlete for two full years just to see her improve a single serve. But that serve opened an entire tactical system.

Three years watching a person grow slowly. Victory is only one part of the picture.

That is why I refuse hasty conclusions about this trip to France. The elite event in Yvelines will show us something very concrete: the current form of each athlete under real competitive conditions, before entering the decisive week in Thailand. It is not the final test. It is a mirror.

In terms of squad structure, the British team is in an interesting transitional state. That the two champions Bayley and Davies are still the first names mentioned shows the team's real depth lies in its veteran class. But the presence of Twomey and Shilton on the list of twelve tells another story about the future. This is the structure I still call "two generations in one vehicle": those who have proven their level, and those being given the chance to prove they can inherit it.

One thing must be said clearly about the role of the elite event in France. It is not a qualification tournament. The British team already holds its place at the World Championships. The real value of the trip lies in ranking points and seeding. In table tennis, seeding position determines whom you meet in which round, and sometimes moving up just a few places is enough to avoid a difficult opponent in the knockout stage. The coaching staff calls this a chance for "valuable match practice" and "the final time the team can compete before Thailand". That phrasing is strategically accurate.

I have always held that fixture density is the greatest enemy of any athlete, and for para athletes the problem is more serious still. Their bodies have often already endured background pressures that able-bodied people do not carry. A dense calendar, combined with travel between continents, can turn a small injury into a major loss. No medical team can save an athlete who plays two matches a week for many months without paying a price. So the coaching staff choosing exactly one buffer event before Thailand, rather than adding more tournaments, is a sound risk-management decision.

The subtlety of the French trip is that it is both a dress rehearsal and an opportunity to reduce load. After the elite event, the team will have a period of recovery before the final training block. This is the kind of planning I often see in well-managed squads: not pushing athletes to peak form too early, but keeping them at a level tense enough to maintain match sharpness, then releasing at the right moment.

But this is where I want to pose a question against the conventional reading. A preparation event with no medal pressure sounds ideal, yet it can also conceal problems. When results are not the only criterion, people easily overlook small signs: a touch of slowness in reaction, a touch of hesitation in decisions, a touch of lost confidence after a few points dropped in a row. At a championship, those signs are exposed immediately. At a buffer event, they can pass in silence.

People search for stars. I search for the first footprints of a journey.

For the British team, the greatest risk is not a lack of talent, but dependence. The two names Bayley and Davies carry the medal expectations in two different classes. If either suffers an injury between September and November, the whole structure of expectation collapses. This is the problem every team with a star must face: how to harness the leader's class while avoiding placing the entire burden on them. The presence of Twomey and Shilton on the list, as I see it, is precisely the long-term answer to that problem.

The French trip will also test the role of Shaun Marples, who holds the position of interim Performance Director. The word "interim" deserves attention. It shows the team is in a leadership transition, even though the announcement keeps a positive and stable tone. An interim leader often tends toward safe decisions, and that can influence how the team approaches the elite event. Will they dare give more match time to the younger class, or will they concentrate on proven faces to secure results? The answer will reveal much about the long-term direction of the discipline.

The training camp in Sheffield, from what I observed, went smoothly. Positive feedback from the coaching staff is a good signal, but it should be read cautiously. Positive feedback in a camp is not proof of competitive results. It only says the preparation process is on plan. Between a good camp and a successful week in Thailand lies an entire distance, and that distance is usually decided by factors beyond the coaching staff's control.

I return to the image of the young girl at the corner of the table, practising her serve. What caught my attention was not her technique — good as it was — but her patience. She repeated that motion with no one praising her, no one scoring her, and no guarantee it would bring results this month or next. That is the nature of development in para table tennis: a quiet process of accumulation, where every small step forward must be paid for in time.

Injury does not take away the most precious thing. It brings you back to the ground to learn how to fly again.

When I look at the British team on this trip, I do not look at the projected medal table. I look at how they arrange time, how they allocate risk, and how they prepare for a future further off than November. A team can win a championship and still walk the wrong road. And a team can win nothing in France and still be heading in the right direction.

So, when the matches in Yvelines begin on September 12, what I will watch is not only who beats whom. I will notice who is given the chance, who is rested, and who leaves the tournament a little more grown than when they arrived. That is what lasts longer than a medal.

A team's season is not decided in the final week. It is decided on afternoons nobody watches — where a young girl still patiently repeats her serve, waiting for the day the world has to look.