Commonwealth champion, Singapore, Egypt and Russia including 11 other nations have already been confirmed for the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Lagos World Tour tagged Nigeria Open holding this month.
According to the list of confirmed countries, other teams that will join host – Nigeria at the tournament scheduled to hold on June 23 to 26 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall of the Teslim Balogun Stadium are
Benin, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Cameroun, Ghana, Libya, Luxembourg, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Togo and Tunisia.
Singapore’s Jing Yuan Yin will represent the Asian nation at the tournament and the junior sensation is expected to compete in the Men’s and U-21 singles.
Also, Egypt has assembled a strong eight-man team led by the defending champion of the Lagos Classics, Omar Assar as well as current Africa’s Senior’s Cup champion, El-Sayed Lashin. His sibling, Khalid, Mohamed El-Beiali and Mohamed Elsobky in the men’s category, will also join Assar.
Also, the number one rated African female player in the world, Dina Meshref will lead the Egyptian women team and Nadeen El-Dawlatly, as well as Farah Abdel-Aziz will join her.
Russia’s flag will be hoisted by the duo of Vasilij Filatov and Irina Ermakova, while one of the top rated player in the world, Xialian Ni will represent Luxembourg in the championship.
According to the chairman, Main Organising Committee (MOC), Wahid Oshodi, efforts are in place to ensure that the standard of organization for this year’s competition is improved.
“A lot more of the same is expected this year and I must thank all the people that made the tournament such a great success in 2013. The experience garnered by many members of MOC in staging various top class events in Lagos came to the fore. The support and encouragement of His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State is probably the most important factor in putting this tournament together. We also must thank our sponsors who are proving to be excellent partners. Of course our success last year has led to the African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF) giving us the hosting rights of the African Top 16 alongside the World Tour.
This means that we have a lot more to do. We are working very hard to ensure that once again, we raise the standard of the tournament and we are pleading with the fans to come to the stadium to see the best of our sport,” Oshodi said.