Toliu made it to the main draw at Feeder in Portugal

In the “knockout” qualifiers of the World Table Tennis Feeder in Portugal, Katerina Toliou overcame two obstacles from Europe (the second, in fact, was her Slovenian teammate at Panathinaikos Ana Tofad) and achieved her main goal.

From Thursday she seeks the best possible placement and in the round of “64” she changes… performances and level of difficulty with an athlete from Korea.

Malamatenia Papadimitriou also took part in the games in Vila Nova de Gaia. Our young champion would have had a difficult task from the start and she was finally eliminated in the second qualifying round by the Croatian Rakovac.

In the doubles, the two members of our national women’s team are not present.

In the singles both had a “bye” in the first qualifying round and then competed at the same time. Toliu, number 218 in the world ranking, had an opponent against the Dutch Tania Helle (No. 699). She encountered difficulties, but confirmed in the three sets that she had the odds on her side (11-9, 11-8, 11-8).

On Wednesday night she competed in the decisive third qualifying round against Ana Tofad (No. 238). Of course, the Slovenian knows our champion well from their cooperation in recent years at Panathinaikos, but she does not play defense with ease. Toliou was stable, even with a reversal from 3-8 she made it 2-0 in the sets and she could not let the opportunity go unexploited. In the final 3-1 the sets were 11-3, 11-9, 7-11 and 11-5.

Later, the main draw at the Portuguese Feeder pitted her against Kim Hae-yong, who is ranked number 119 in the world. The Korean found herself directly on “64”. The match starts at 11:35 Greek time on Thursday.

Papadimitriou (number 388 in the world) faced off in the second qualifier against the Croatian Lea Rakovac (No. 255). She came into the match very strongly and took the lead, then had a set bowl 10-9 to make it 2-0, until finally losing 3-1, despite her good performance (11-9, 10-12, 4-11 , 9-11).