Nigeria Table Tennis star, Quadri Aruna has been handed a familiar foe, Eduard Ionescu (Romania) in the Round of 64 in the Men’s Singles, according to the draws conducted on Wednesday, www.aclsports.com reports
Aruna will commence his fifth Olympic Games campaign which will commence on July 28.
According to the head-to-head between Aruna and Romanian, both players have met once and that was during the semifinal of the European Champions League in which the Romanian defeated Aruna 3-2 and Paris 2024 will be their second meeting in any competition.
Aruna, whose best outing at the Olympic Games was at Rio 2016 in Brazil where he defied odds to reach the quarterfinal of the Men’s Singles as the first African to attain the height.
However, Egypt’s Omar Assar equaled Aruna’s quarterfinal feat at the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 when the 2023 African Games champion worked his way into the last eight of the Men’s Singles in Japan.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s trio of Olajide Omotayo, Offiong Edem, and Fatimo Bello have gotten their first-round ahead of the event kicks off on July 27 at South Paris Arena.
Olajide Omotayo has a tough duel against Iran’s Noshad Alamiyan in the first round of the Men’s Singles in the Table Tennis event.
Edem who is making her fifth Olympic Games appearance will lock horns against Brazil’s Bruna Takahashi while debutant Fatimo Bello will face a herculean task against Chinese-born French star, Jia Nana Yuan in the first round of the Women’s Singles
Other Africans like Egypt’s trio of Dina Meshref, Hana Goda, and Mohamed El-Beiali as well as Senegal’s Ibrahima Diaw, Cameroon’s Sarah Hanffou, Algeria’s duo of Mehdi Bouloussa and Lyna Loghraibi including history-making 21-year-old Fabio Rakotoarimanana of Madagascar will all begin their quest from the Preliminary Rounds of the Men’s and Women’s Singles on July 27.
A total of 172 players, (86 in men’s and 86 in women’s category), will compete across five medal events (two per gender and a mixed) at the Paris Olympic Games, while Omotayo who will be making his second appearance at the games will start his campaign from the Preliminary Rounds of the Men’s Singles.
