William John Bayley (born 17 January 1988) is a British professional Paralympic table tennis player, ranked world number 1. He is the 2016 Summer Paralympics Games gold medallist and the 2014 World Champion.
At the age of seven he was diagnosed with cancer. During his recovery he began playing table tennis after his grandmother bought him his first table.[1][3][4]
Career
At the age of 12 he joined the Byng Hall Table Tennis Club in Tunbridge Wells, and went on to represent Kent's able bodied men's team.[4] From the age of 17 he has lived and trained full-time at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.[5]
He represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, where he was knocked out of the table tennis C7 singles in the preliminary round after defeats against Germany's Jochen Wollmert and Ukraine's Mykhaylo Popov and a single victory against Shumel Shur of Israel.[6] He also competed in the C6-8 team event along with Paul Karabardak and David Wetherill; they were eliminated at the quarterfinal stage.[4] In 2009, he won gold medals at the Czech and German opens, in 2010 he took golds in Lignano and Brazil.[2]
Bayley won a gold medal in the singles at the 2011 European Championships in Split, Croatia. He also won a silver medal in the men's Team event class 7, playing alongside Karabardak. At the end of 2011 he was voted the European Players' Player of the Year and in January 2012 he achieved the world number one ranking.[4]
At the Rio 2016 Summer Paralympics, Bayley won his first Paralympic gold medal after beating home-favourite Brazilian Israel Pereira Stroh. He received a yellow card for jumping up onto the table in celebration.[8]
Bayley again won silver at the delayed Tokyo 2020 games, his third successive Paralympic medal.[9] He went on to win silver in the team event, where he had a rematch in the final against Yan Shuo, who he lost his olympic title to a week earlier.[citation needed]
The couple's Contemporary dance, to Lukas Graham's song "7 Years", was dedicated to the patients and staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Bayley had been treated for cancer, aged seven. Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph said the pair "... didn't leave a dry eye in the house after their beautiful, barefoot contemporary dance."[12]
Due to a knee injury, sustained from a studio rehearsal, Bayley was unable to perform in week 6 (Halloween Week). Under the rules of the competition, he was given a "bye" to the following week, however, it was later confirmed that he had withdrawn from the competition.[citation needed] He said, "I'm gutted my Strictly journey has had to come to an end. I've loved being part of the show."[13]
