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Table Tennis Team Nominated for Rio 2016
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On Monday, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Table Tennis Canada named the two athletes nominated to represent Team Canada in table tennis at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games from August 5 to 21.
The two athletes selected are two-time Olympian Mo Zhang and London 2012 Olympian Eugene Wang. The team is coached by Wang Zhi.
The North American Olympic Qualifier took place April 8-10, 2016 at the Pan Am Centre in Markham, Ontario. The qualifier consisted of three individual competitions - one to be completed on each of the three competition days - to determine qualifiers for the Olympic Games in Rio and potential reserves. While Wang had no problem qualifying for the men’s singles on the first day, Zhang had to wait for day two to qualify to represent Team Canada in women’s singles at the 2016 Olympic Games.
A three-time medallist at the Pan Am Games, Zhang just finished her training in Linz, Austria and played in the 2016 Croatia Open. Wang, who won singles bronze at the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am Games, finished his season with his club Jura Morez in the French League and will be competing at the Korean Open and the Japan Open during the month of June. Both athletes will be training in China throughout the month of July before arriving in Rio on July 31.
Table Tennis at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games is scheduled to take place from August 6 to 17 at the third pavilion of Riocentro. Around 172 table tennis players (equally distributed between men and women) are expected to compete in both the singles and team events.
At Rio 2016, Canada will field a team of more than 315 athletes.
Table Tennis Canada is the national governing body for table tennis in Canada. TTCAN’s mission is to promote and develop table tennis in Canada from the grass roots to the podium.
“I was not able to participate in the singles event four years ago in London. Therefore, I worked hard for the last four years to prepare myself for the 2016 Olympic Games. My goal is to reach the top 16, but that all depends on the draw. No match will be easy, so I need to adjust for each round and be in shape from match to match. So far, I don’t think too much about it, but I know that I will have to fight from the first to the last point.” (Eugene Wang, London 2012 Olympian, Table Tennis)
“I am feeling very proud to represent Canada at the 2016 Olympic Games. My goal will be to reach the round of 16, but I don’t want to think about it too much. Just doing the best I can will be a good result.” (Mo Zhang, two-time Olympian, Table Tennis)
“The Canadian team will undertake a high quality final preparation phase with training camps at TTCAN’s partner centre in China and high level competitions in Europe and Asia. Mo Zhang and Eugene Wang will be ready for the Games!” (Tony Kiesenhofer, CEO, Table Tennis Canada)
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