Of the four Nigerian athletes that featured at the ITTF Africa Para Table Tennis Championship, which served as qualifiers for the Rio 2016 Paralympics Games, the duo of Ahmed Owolabi Koleosho and Chinenye Obiora made the eight-man list that secured their places at the Paralympics Games.
However, Francis Chukwuemeka who had earlier at the Morocco Open won two gold medals failed to make it while Emmanuel Chinedu Nick was also unlucky to make the list.
From the eight athletes that qualified, five of them were Egyptians, one South Africans while Obiora and Koleosho completed the list.
To qualify, Obiora was unbeaten in the women’s singles class 1-5 to emerge as winner ahead of players from Morocco and South Africa while Koleosho caused an upset to book his place at the Paralympics Games.
He accounted for the exit of Egypt’s Aly Mohamen Nasr, the top seed, in the final of Class 1-3 (11-8, 11-6, 11-7).
An excited Koleosho said: “It is great to win, I was the second seed in the competition, it is a great step for me, I trained hard for this and I listened to every word my coach said”, explained Koleosho. “I practice for about four hours per day, in the final I was playing against a champion who is a very experienced player; I am new to the game, I only started to play in 2013.”
The Nigerian admitted that the experience he garnered during the Morocco Open aided his success at the African Championship. It is very big for me to qualify for the Paralympics; playing in the Morocco Open has really helped me improve, I lost to Welder Knaf from Brazil, he is very experienced but I learned a great deal by playing against him”, added Koleosho. “After the match he talked to me about little things which improved my game; before the tournaments in Agadir, we prepared in Nigeria against many different players with different styles, this helped.”
Meanwhile, the President of African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF), Khaled El-Salhy described the tournament as competitive. The standard is quite good due to the participation of the top teams like Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa and the competition was quite fierce when during the semi-finals and final rounds to decide the winners and qualifiers,” the ATTF boss said.