Greek entries in consecutive Contender table tennis tournaments in June

In June, World Table Tennis Contenders of different levels take place consecutively and Greek champions have declared participation in three of them. Giannis Sgouropoulos, Katerina Toliou and Elisabeth Terpou are set to take part in the WTT Contender Men’s-Women’s Croatia, June 26-July 2 in Zagreb.

At the youth level, Malamatenia Papadimitriou declared participation in two consecutive tournaments in Latin America: In the WTT Youth Star Contender of Peru, which will take place in Lima 21-25/06 and in the WTT Youth Contender of Brazil, which will take place in Rio De Janeiro 06/28-01/07.

Sgouropoulos, Toliou and Terpou want points for the world ranking, which is why they entered for the tournament in the Croatian capital, even though the dates coincide with the overall time frame of the third European Games.

Our three champions and Gionis are the ones who will represent Greek table tennis at the top event in Krakow-Małopolska. The table tennis matches will take place 23/06-01/07. If Sgouropoulos, Toliou and Terpou are eliminated in the first few days of the singles, then they will compete normally in Contender, so they have already bought tickets to go straight from Poland to Croatia.

So, as long as they are in “Dom Sportova” in Zagreb, they will all go through the qualifying board. Sgouropoulos appears in the player list as number 236 in the world, Toliou as number 174 and Terpou as number 392.

In the corresponding series of youth tournaments first comes the WTT Youth Star Contender in Peru, where there is always a limit of a few entries in the Under 15 and Under 19 categories and the leaderboards count. Papadimitriou will play in “Villa Deportiva Nacional” as the number 17 of the juniors, while she is in the 132nd place in the world ranking of the category.

The matches also have Under 19 girls’ doubles and mixed doubles. The current champion of Greece in the junior and young women’s singles has declared junior doubles with Brazilian Julia Takahashi and mixed doubles with Slovakian Samuel Arpas.

Right after that, comes Brazil’s WTT Youth Contender. Papadimitriou, who is also looking to improve her points, will be eighth favorite of the Under 19s at the ‘Arena Carioca I’ in Rio de Janeiro.

It should be noted, finally, that by choosing to participate in the Brazilian Open, she is excluded from the Balkan Youth Championship of Orestiada, 28/06-02/07.