WTT YOUTH CONTENDER DARWIN 2023

It has been an exciting fortnight of table tennis in Darwin, with the four-day Youth Contender event finishing on Sunday with a strong result for Australia in a tough competition. The tournament was preceded by a six-day ITTF High Performance Training Camp led by Massimo Costantini, ITTF HP Elite coach, and followed by the Oceania Hopes, also led by Massimo.

The Australian players faced tough competition in this year’s Darwin Youth Contender event, with strong teams from China and Chinese Taipei, a large Singapore team and a smaller number of quality players from India, Malaysia, Korea and New Zealand.

Lawrence Fan won Australia’s only Gold in the U11 Boys Singles, dominating his opponent, a chopper from Singapore, while Bella Chen secured a Bronze in U11 Girls Singles.

Steven So and Shutian Xie both won Silver in the U13 Boys Singles and Girls Singles respectively, whilst Kavyaa Madaan won Bronze in the U13 Girls Singles. Lawrence Fan and Aaron Nguyen added to the Australian medal tally in the U13 Boys Singles event by winning Bronze each.

Constantina Psihogios performed very well in an U15 girls field that included 5 girls with world rankings in the top 25 for the event. She defeated the WR12 Jennifer Varghese (IND) to reach the final where she succumbed to an unconventional Chinese opponent.

Lucas Lum and Chloe Cheng secured Bronze in a tough U15 Mixed Doubles field and Richard Fu was the best performed of the Australians in the U15 Boys Singles, winning Bronze.

With four out of five of Australia’s top U17 and U19 male players on duty elsewhere, those events were dominated by Chinese Taipei and China. Chinese Taipei took out Gold and Silver in U17 Boys Singles, while China did the same in U19 Boys Singles. The results were similar in the equivalent Girls events with China and Chinese Taipei taking the medals.