Abstract
Table tennis is a sport that arrived in São Paulo at the beginning of the 20th century. Currently, it is common to associate its development with the Japanese colony, perhaps there are two immigrants and descendants of other nationalities who are behind important advances in the practice of rackets in their competitive format. This historiographical research aims to structure the Italian roots of table tennis in São Paulo, based on a qualitative and exploratory approach to the literature relevant to the topic, combined with documentary analyzes of the days of the period available on the Digital Library of Newspapers website. It is confirmed that between the decades of 1910 and 1930, unions, managers and players from the Italian colony occupied prominent positions in sports circles, in addition to being important for the process of democratization of the sport. After years of this research, it is expected that it will not only contribute to discussions about associations and the protagonism of Italian immigrants in the sporting sphere but also contribute to the incipient historical studies of Brazilian table tennis.
Keywords
Postgraduate Education; History; Italian immigration; São Paulo