Durban hosts the World Table Tennis Championships 20-28 May and brings together the “cream of the crop” of the sport, promising good organization and exciting competitive moments. Panagiotis Gionis and Katerina Toliou, who have been at the venue of the big event since Thursday morning, learned on the morning of the same day their opponents in the simple, the only competition, in which they will take part.
In the “knockout” system, the scoreboard is “128” and Gionis will face the Iranian Amir Hossein Hodai and in the women’s singles, Toliou will face Li Yujun from Taipei.
The detailed program for the singles matches has not been announced yet, however the competition starts on Saturday morning. Gionis is high on the board and quickly drops to a …behemoth if he shuts out Hossein Hodai. In particular, the current men’s singles world champion, Fan Zhendong, will be waiting for him. The Chinese is first favorite and, as he has the only bye, goes directly to the “64”.
Matches of the second round appear in the unofficial schedule for both next Sunday and Monday 22/05.
Toliu, if she prevails against Li Yu, will find in front of her in the “64” the winner of the Rachel More (Switzerland)-Hanna Gonda (Egypt) match.
Almost all the early favorites at the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships Finals are from China. In men, the top four includes, after Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqing’s compatriots Ma Long and Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto.
In women, the top athletes in the world rankings, who also have the first places in the seeding, are in order Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Chen Meng and Wang Yidi, all from China.
Tina Crotta from Thessaloniki took part in the drawing process, of course, who, we remind you that a short time ago she became the first professional referee in table tennis by the World Federation.
DRAWINGS FOR PAPADIMITRIOU, CREANGA IN THE BULGARIAN YOUTH CONTENDER
In the meantime, we also had draws for the girls’ categories at the World Table Tennis Youth Contender in Bulgaria, which continues in Panagiouriste.
After Konstantinos Alexoudis, who achieved the distinction of third place in the Under 13 category under the instructions of Giorgi Daskalov, from Friday 19/05, juniors Malamatenia Papadimitriou and Maria-Ioanna Kreanga will take their turn for the Greek colors.
In the Under 19 category there were 11 qualifying groups. Papadimitriou is in tenth place and will challenge for qualification against Romanian Bianca May Rozu (head) and Serbian Emma Popovic.
Creanga was drawn in the sixth group with opponents Romania’s Ioanna Singeorzan (lead) and Belgium’s Julie Van Houvaert.
In the girls’ Under 17 category, 14 groups were formed and, except for the last one, all of them are of three athletes. Creanga was drawn in the seventh group and faces Japan’s Mao Takamori (seed) and Romania’s Vivienne Tamas.
The coaching has been undertaken by the legendary Kallinikos Kreanga, father of Maria-Ioanna.
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