Organisers of the World Table Tennis, WTT Contender Lagos, say they are disappointed that Africa’s top table tennis player, Aruna Quadri, will not feature at the competition, but expects the younger players to show up.
Quadri, in a post on the WTT Lagos Instagram account, announced that club engagements had prevented him from making the trip down to Lagos as he drums support for other Nigerian players in the 12th to 18th June competition.
The WTT Contender which is coming on the heels of the just concluded first ITTF World Championships in Africa since 1939, will allow players to garner ranking points in their quest to pick tickets to Paris 2024 Olympic Games in France.
The event director, Dr Kweku Tandoh, told Voice of Nigeria that playing with top players in the competition will help the younger players improve their performance.
Dr. Tandoh said “Quadri himself feels bad that he cannot be here because one of the players that beat him at the WTT in Durban, South Africa, will also be here. It would have been an opportunity for him to avenge. We have the former world number one coming and about 13 Chinese players coming here too. The tournament is going to be top quality.”
He added that for younger players “It is an opportunity even if they don’t get through to the qualifiers. It is competitions like this that will help them to build confidence, and help them to know where they need to improve in terms of their performance. Don’t forget that players like Taiwo Mati (ranked 75) and Olajide Omotayo (ranked 144) started about 10 years ago with the Lagos International Classics, now they are world players because at that early stage, they were able to rub shoulders with top foreign players and it helped them to build up their own game”.
The Molade Okoya Thomas Indoor Sports Hall of the Teslim Balogun stadium in Lagos will host players from 31 countries including former world number one, Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany.
Emmanuel Ukoh
