30 Jul 2024
Aspire Academy’s table tennis student-athletes are starting a well-earned rest after a busy month of July.
The highlights of the three tournaments in July included bronze medals for Ahmed Korani and Essa El Haddad at the World Table Tennis (WTT) Youth Contender event in Iraq, as they lost in their respective semi-finals.
Before the event in Iraq, the Asian Youth Championships in China, an event for under-15 and under-19 players, were held; this was followed by another WTT Youth Contender event in Jordan.
The WTT events featured events for under-11 players through under-19s, with Ahmed Korani (16), Yousif Abdalla (15), and Essa El Haddad (12) participating in both competitions.
Qatar was represented by Rawad Al Naser (16), alongside Ahmed Korani and Yousif Abdulla, at the Asian Championships.
All three events proved valuable experiences for the players, with some good results along the way, especially since the student-athletes often played against older opponents.
“Overall, we are proving that Aspire Academy’s table tennis programme is moving very much in the right direction and that we have top-quality training methods and facilities that are developing our players,” table tennis head coach Peter Karlsson said.
“We strongly believe that we are doing the right things and that these kinds of performances speak for us.”
“Reaching the semi-final at a WTT Youth competition is always a good performance, so when players from a small country like Qatar do it, the rest of the table tennis world will take note.”
At the WTT event in Amman, Jordan, all the Aspire Academy student-athletes played in two age brackets, and all progressed from their groups into the knockout stages.
Ahmed Korani impressed in the under-17 category as he reached the quarter-finals, where he lost to the eventual runner-up.
There was also a last-eight place for Essa El Haddad in the under-13’s before he, too, lost to the overall runner-up.
A few days before the event in Jordan, the trio also competed in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. Again, all three participated in two age categories.
The standout results saw Ahmed Korani reach the semi-finals in the under-17s, where he narrowly lost 3-2 to the eventual winner of the event, Eden Lau of Hong Kong. In the under-19s, Ahmed Korani lost in the last eight again to the eventual winner, India's Divyansh Srivastava.
Essa El Haddad also reached the final four of the under-13s, but he, too, lost to Iran’s Pakzad Rahimyan, the overall winner, who beat Qatar’s Abdulaziz Al Abdulla in the final.
Yousif Abdulla achieved his best result in the two WTT events in Iraq, reaching the quarter-finals in the under-15s.
At the start of July, Qatar’s team of Aspire Academy student-athletes made an impression at the Asian Youth Championships in Chongqing, China, by reaching the knockout stages of the under-19 team event.
The achievement came despite Yousif Abdulla being 15 years old, while Rawad Al Naser and Ahmed Korani are both still just 16.
In the last 16, the trio put on a good show and were only beaten by a very strong team from Hong Kong.
The Aspire Academy table tennis student-athletes are now taking a short break before returning to training ahead of the West Asian Youth Championships, which begin in Amman on 26 August.
The Academy is also delighted to welcome some overseas players to train at Aspire’s facilities, including four each from Sweden and India and two from Croatia.