Men’s class 8 world champion Ross Wilson heads a squad of 12 athletes from the British Para Table Tennis team which will compete in the PTT Finland Open in Lahti from October 11-13. The 24 year old from Minster is hoping to put a disappointing quarter-final loss in the European Championships behind him and consolidate his qualification for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo next year.
“Every competition you go into you look to win,” he said. “I don’t feel I have to do any better in Finland because of what happened in the Europeans and I won’t approach it differently to any other competition. I just want to take each match as it comes and do my very best to win.
“There are so many competitions throughout the year and the major is the one we look to peak for and I don’t feel that I peaked for the Europeans in the right way this year. But I am working on that; I have made some changes since and started playing in a league in Switzerland to give myself some more match practice against better players.”
Also hoping to improve their chances of qualification for Tokyo will be David Wetherill, who is now ranked world No 4 in men’s class 6 after taking European singles bronze, Billy Shilton (men’s class 8), Joshua Stacey, Ashley Facey Thompson (men’s class 9), Kim Daybell (men’s class 10) and Fliss Pickard (women’s class 6) who all reached the quarter-finals of their respective singles events at the European Championships last month.
They are joined by four members of the Pathway and Development squads Lucie Bouron (women’s class 3), Marc Bonnar, Noel Thomas (men’s class 2) and Lee York (men’s class 4).