11th March, 2015
The defending champion of International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Tour, Lagos Open, Egyptian Omar Assar has declared that he would love to play Nigerian international star, Aruna Quadri in the final of the competition on Saturday.
The tournament, which is currently going on at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos with no fewer than 82 players drawn from 11 countries will compete in the $46,000 prize money championship.
Assar said at the venue of the competition, Molade Okoya Thomas Indoor Sports Hall of the stadium yesterday that he had trained very hard for fitness and physical readiness for the competition and it would be a great joy for him to meet the ITTF Star Player of 2014, Nigerian Quadri.
According to him, “I trained hard for this competition. My training took me to China during last Christmas and I’m looking forward to performing better than my previous outing in Lagos. I will take each match as it comes and my focus now is the first round of games, which I believe that my training would help me to overcome the challenges.
“I would love to play against the Nigerian player, Aruna Quadri in the final. He had achieved a lot since last year’s competition in Lagos and I believe we’ll have a great time playing each other this year.
“It is a pleasure playing again in the 2015 Lagos Open, it is a challenge for us (Egyptians) that Nigerian players are getting better in the again but I look forward to other African countries such as Congolese,Tunisian,Togolese and the rest winning at the international games more often.
“I want to say that Egypt’s dominant of table tennis in Africa is as a result of long term and adequate planning, I will love to playing with Aruna but needs to focus on the games.”
The Egyptian, who won 4 medals at the Maputo 2011 All Africa Games (2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze medal), wished his compatriots well in the championship which attracts ITTF ranking points. Omar Assar and Dina Meshref were crowned champions of the 2015 Africa Championships. Assar overcame his team mates Ahmed Saleh by 11:6, 11:9, 14:12.