Mima Ito

Mima Ito (伊藤 美誠) is a Japanese table tennis player.

At eleven she defeated the player ranked 50th in the world at the time.

The triple crown is the third in the history of the All Japan Table Tennis Championships after Kazuko Yamaizumi (1960) and Kasumi Ishikawa (2014), and she was the youngest to achieve this feat at the age of 17 years old.

In February, at the Team World Cup, where a new method of playing doubles in the first game was introduced, she played mainly in doubles with Hina Hayata and won a silver medal.

In March 2014, she, together with Miu Hirano, won the doubles' title at German Open.

They were both 13 at the time.

Thus they became the youngest-ever winners of a doubles competition in the ITTF World Tour.

In April 2014, she again won a double title with Miu Hirano, at the ITTF World Tour in Spain.

In December 2014, she won again the doubles with Miu Hirano at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Bangkok against the Singaporean partnership Feng Tianwei and Yu Mengyu, and at that moment Miu Hirano and Mima Ito became the youngest players winning the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals.

At the age of 14, she moved in June 2015 for the first time into the Top 10 in the world rankings before she was defeated by Han Ying and Chen Meng, reaching World Rank No. 9.

In March 2015, she won, after beating Shan Xiaona, Che Xiaoxi and Feng Tianwei, the singles' title at German Open against Petrissa Solja.

On 5 July 2015, Mima Ito and Miu Hirano won the Women's Doubles title at the ITTF World Tour on the Korea Open in the city of Incheon.

In December 2015, the 2015 ITTF Star Awards, a Breakthrough Star Award presented by TMS International was given out to Japan's Mima Ito.

At 14 years and 153 days old when she won the 2015 ITTF World Tour German Open singles title on Sunday 22 March she became the youngest player ever to win a women’s singles title either on the ITTF World Tour or at an ITTF Challenge Series tournament.

In September 2015, it was announced that she would be part of the Japanese national team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

At 15 years of age, she won the bronze medal for Japan, where she won the last and important game against Feng Tianwei (Ranked 4th in the world), with 3–0 in sets for the Japanese women's table tennis team with Ai Fukuhara and Kasumi Ishikawa.

With her bronze medal in Rio, she broke another record for the youngest Olympic table tennis player to win a medal in the Women's Team category.

She won a bronze medal in the Women's Team event at the 2016 Summer Olympics when she was 15 years old.

In 2017, she played for the Liaoning team in the second-tier Chinese league.

In January 2018, she won the women's singles at the All Japan Championship for the first time by defeating Miu Hirano in the final.

She also won women's doubles with Hina Hayata and the mixed doubles with Masataka Morizono and achieved a triple crown.

In May, in the 2018 World Team Table Tennis Championships, she defeated Jeon Ji-hee 3–0 in the semifinals and Liu Shiwen, who has won 37 consecutive victories against Japanese players, in the first match in the final.

She won 3–2 against her.

The Japanese team eventually lost to China 1–3 and won a silver medal, but Ito herself finished the tournament with eight wins and zero losses.

In June, at the Japan Open, she beat Chen Xingtong in the women's singles semi-final after coming back from 0–3 deficit.

She then went on to beat Wang Manyu in the final.

In November 2018, she beat all the top Chinese players ranked higher than her: world no. 6 and Olympic Singles gold medalist Ding Ning, world no. 2 Liu Shiwen and world no. 1 Zhu Yuling at the 2018 Swedish Open, winning the tournament.

In November 2019, she beat world junior champion Qian Tianyi and Zhu Yuling to win the Austrian Open.

At the 2020 Summer Olympics, she won the gold medal with her partner Jun Mizutani in the Mixed Doubles event which made its debut, a bronze medal in the Women's singles, and a silver medal in the Women's Team event.

Often termed as the 'greatest threat' to Chinese table tennis dominance, Ito Mima has the highest winning rate against Chinese players in the history of women's table tennis.

She has a winning record against several top Chinese players, including world champion Liu Shiwen, former world no. 1 Zhu Yuling and world junior champion Qian Tianyi.

Her signature playing style entails lethal shovel serves, fast short-pimpled backhand punches and flat forehand smashes.

In March 2020 at the Qatar Open, Ito Mima recorded a 4–0 win against reigning Olympic champion Ding Ning in the semifinals.

Notably, she won the third set 11–0, making it the first time a non-Chinese player won a set 11–0 against a Chinese player.

At the age of ten, she became the youngest person to win a match at the Japanese senior table tennis championships and the youngest person to win an ITTF Junior Circuit tournament.

In January 2020, it was announced that Ito Mima would be part of the women's table tennis team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, together with Kasumi Ishikawa and Miu Hirano.

Earlier on, she had been the first player to be selected to play in the Women's Singles event.

In February, she won the Hungarian Open 2020, beating Taiwanese top player Cheng I-ching 4–3.

In March 2020, Ito Mima and Jun Mizutani won the Mixed Doubles category at the Qatar Open, beating Chinese pair Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin 3–1 in the finals.

In November 2020, she won the bronze medal in the 2020 Women's World Cup, losing to Sun Yingsha in the semifinals, but beating Han Ying in the 3rd–4th place match.