Top Table Tennis in the Heart of the San Francisco Bay Area
The most important junior event of the International Table
Tennis Federation (ITTF) will be held at the University of
Stanford. In the Roscoe Maples Pavilion, normally host of
the Basketball and Volleyball teams of the University, the
world’s best table tennis boys and girls of the age
of eighteen and younger will play team events from 8th to
11th as well as singles and doubles events from 11th to 15th
December.
English Boys with Good Prospects
In the girls’ team event of the 5th World Junior Championships
(WJC), the Japanese team with Yuka ISHIGAKI, Kasumi ISHIKAWA,
Yuko FUJII and the winner of the 2007 World Junior Circuit
Finals in Cape Town, South Africa Misako WAKAMIYA will be
very hard to beat for other nations.
The boys from England with Paul DRINKHALL, Darius KNIGHT,
Daniel REED and youngster Gavin EVANS will be challenged by
the Asian teams from Japan, Korea and China. A forecast is
however very difficult to make because Japan will play without
Jun MIZUTANI and defending singles champion Kenta MATSUDAIRA
while the Chinese team consists of mainly unknown players
born between 1991 and 1994.
The American teams may not yet vie for the medals. There
are however two names to remember in the female team. Twelve
year old Ariel HSING and eleven year old Lily ZHANG have reached
already an impressive level and have become the synonym for
US future hopes.
The World Junior Championships – a World Tour
through all Continents
The WJC is a prime example for continental rotation. Starting
in 2003 with the inaugural event in Santiago de Chile, Latin
America, the championships were then hosted in Asia, in Kobe,
Japan in 2004. The event in 2005 took place in Linz, Austria,
in Europe before going to Cairo, Egypt 2006 in Africa.
This year Palo Alto is responsible for hosting the WJC in
Northern America and in 2008, the tournament will be held
in Oceania or more precisely in Auckland New Zealand
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"Source:
ITTF Press Release