Teqball debuts at Asian Games as Thailand’s Jutatip Kuntatong prepares with airborne bicycle kicks

Jutatip Kuntatong executed a bicycle kick at Bangkok’s Sports Science Centre as she prepared to represent Thailand in teqball at the Asian Games in Japan, which start on Saturday. The 28-year-old, practising acrobatics at the team’s training session, is among competitors as the sport makes its debut at the Games this weekend.

Teqball was invented a little over a decade ago in Hungary when two friends began playing football on a ping pong table and later developed the sport’s signature curved table. The game blends elements of football and table tennis, is scored like ping pong, uses a standard soccer ball and allows a maximum of three touches before returning the ball, with no player permitted to use the same body part consecutively. The sport has already been included at European and African games and carries ambitions to become an Olympic sport by 2032.

Six years ago Jutatip says she had never heard of teqball: "I had no idea at all what sport is this," she told reporters, adding, "I just said yes." After taking the singles and doubles titles at the most recent world championships in Transylvania in December, she is now the No 1-ranked woman in the sport and holds the world champion title. "It feels like a dream because everything happened so fast," Jutatip says, and her 151cm stature has not prevented her from producing the acrobatic plays that have defined her success.

Thailand’s uptake of teqball has drawn directly on the nation’s tradition in sepak takraw, and the Teqball Association of Thailand’s association secretariat, major general Piyapat Jarunpong, framed the sport as closer to that discipline than to football: "We reckon that it’s not football – the skills and the way you use the moves is more like sepak takraw." Sepak takraw is similarly played without hands or arms and depends on leg strength and control through kicks, a connection the Thai team has used to its advantage.

The national coach, Somsak "Joe" Duangmuang, brings more than two decades of sepak takraw coaching experience and a background as a former national sepak takraw player to teqball. Somsak said: "It’s quite exciting for me, that I see an opportunity to bring a new challenge to our athletes. It’s expanded a new area of training with the skills that we have."

László Vajda, secretary general of the International Teqball Federation, noted technical complexity in the rules, saying the restriction on repeated use of the same body part makes the sport "very intricate." Vajda also pointed to a global spread of playing styles across the federation’s 147 national members, naming Thailand as the strongest nation at the moment and saying: "In Brazil, it’s a lot of chest and head. In central Europe – especially Romania, Hungary, Poland – because of local sports, it’s a lot of side smashes. In Asia, especially south-east Asia, because of sepak takraw, you have a lot of bicycle kick when they jump up backwards, and they smash with their feet up. Africa and the Middle East it’s very athletic – amazing jumps and very technical, very football-ish. It’s quite amazing to see when for example there is a Brazil/Thailand, or a Serbia/Thailand game very, very different styles clash," Vajda says.

Organisers expect teams from 16 nations to compete in teqball at the Asian Games; the event will also introduce padel and virtual taekwondo, the latter described as a non-contact sport using virtual reality headsets. The Thai association views the Games as an opportunity to attract younger players and expand the sport’s profile in the region, a development Piyapat described as: "It’s quite a big step forward. It’s a huge leap, to be honest."

Teqball will make its Asian Games debut in Japan this weekend with 16 nations taking part, and Thailand will field competitors including Jutatip Kuntatong as the sport appears on a continental multi-sport stage for the first time.