The 2023 African Games champion is the first player from the continent to reach consecutive Olympic quarterfinals.
Egypt's Omar Assar has rewritten African table tennis history at the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympics.
The 2023 African Games champion has become the first player from the continent to reach consecutive Olympic quarterfinals.
Assar's journey to this historic achievement witnessed several challenges, including his match against Kazakhstan's Kirill Gerassimenko, where he trailed 0-2, before staging a remarkable comeback to win 4-2.
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The victory moves him closer to breaking his own record of reaching the quarterfinals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The Egyptian's path to the quarterfinals included impressive wins over Ecuador's Mino Alberto and Madagascar's Fabio Rakotoarimanana.
11:04 - 27.07.2024
Paris 2024: Nigeria's Table Tennis stars begin the journey for Olympic Gold
Quadri Aruna and Omotayo Olajide will begin their Olympics journey on Saturday as they compete in the men's singles round of 64.
His next challenge is a quarterfinal match against Sweden's Truls Moregard, and a win could see him go further to play in the semifinals.
Quadri Aruna crashed out in the first round
Meanwhile, Nigerian table tennis star Quadri Aruna suffered a devastating loss to Romanian teenager Eduard Ionescu in the round of 64 (first round) at the Paris Olympics to exist from the events.
Aruna, the world number 16, dominated the early stages of the match, winning the first three sets convincingly. However, Ionescu staged a remarkable comeback, levelling the match at 3-3 before claiming the victory in the deciding seventh set.
The defeat sent Aruna out of the Olympics, who had been aiming to surpass his previous best Olympic result of reaching the quarterfinals.