Tin-Tin Ho and Tom Jarvis are through to the second stage of the singles, whilst Tom Jarvis and Helshan Weerasinghe are through to the round of 16 men’s doubles at the European U21 Championships.
Singles
Tin-Tin Ho got off to a winning start in Sochi.
The England Leopard’s player topped her group after defeating Turkey’s Simay Kulakakan 4-0 (11-3, 11-4, 11-7, 11-1), Austria’s Karoline Mischek 4-1 (12-10, 11-7, 4-11, 11-4, 11-5) and Finland’s Annika Lundstrom 4-0 (11-4, 11-2, 11-7, 11-4).
In tomorrow’s second group stage, Ho will face Anna Wegrzyn (POL), Tatiana Kukulkova (SVK) and the familiar face of Nina Mittelham (GER), who she recently lost 0-3 in the England Leopard’s European Qualifying match in Preston. Mittelham is seeded #2 for the tournament.
Tom Jarvis is also through to the next stage after finishing second in his group.
He was beaten by Martin Allegro (BEL) 1-4 (8-11, 11-8, 13-15 4-11, 10-12), but then went on win against Ibrahim Gunduz (TUR) 4-0 (14-12, 11-8, 11-6, 11-7).
Jarvis will now face Tomasz Kotowski (POL), Tobias Rasmussen (DEN) and the tournament’s #1 seed Anton Kallberg (SWE) in the second group stage.
However, Helshan Weerasinghe has been knocked out of the singles competition, having lost to Rares Sipos (ROU) 1-4 (5-11, 6-11, 6-11, 11-6, 4-11), Medardas Stankevicius (LTU) 2-4 (1-11, 11-9, 6-11, 8-11, 11-13, 6-11) and Marke Badowski (POL) 0-4 (6-11, 9-11, 9-11, 6-11) .
Doubles
In the women’s doubles, an English/Welsh combination of Tin-Tin Ho and Charlotte Carey could not better Karoline Mischek (AUT) and Airi Avameri (EST) as, despite taking a 2-0 lead, they lost 2-3 (11-5, 11-8, 5-11, 6-11, 6-11).
Whilst in the men’s doubles, Jarvis and Weerasinghe united to defeat Diogo Chen (POR) and Aliaksandr Khanin (BLR) 3-0 (12-10, 11-2, 11-6).
The English pair will play their next match on Saturday against Denmark’s Tobias Rasmussen and Claus Nielsen.
The competition
The European U21 Championships is a new competition, introduced by the European Table Tennis Union to help players making the transition from Junior to Senior status.
The top 56 men and top 56 women in the European rankings have been invited to compete in singles and doubles competitions.