Benedek Olah Arkistokuva Lehtikuva

The 4th edition of the annual International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Premier Lotto Nigeria Open ended on Sunday with Finland’s Benedek Olah, making his first appearance winning the men’s singles title.

Olah beat Egypt’s Khalid Assar 11-7, 11-9, 12-10, 11-7, 11-5 (4-1) to clinch the 5,200-dollar prize money while Assar got 2,600 dollars.

Portugal’s Jieni Shao retained her women’s singles title by defeating Hungary’s Szandra Pergel 11-8, 4-11, 9-11, 11-6, 9-11 (4-11).

The duo of Nigeria’s Funke Oshonaike and Cameron’s Serah Hanffou played second fiddle to Russia’ s Inna Ermakova and Olga Kulikova by 11-4, 11-3, 11-7 (3-0) in the women’s doubles final.

Russia’s Andrey Bukin and Vasily Filatov overpowered Poland’s Diogo Carvalho and Diogo Chen to clinch the mens doubles trophy by 6-11, 11-7, 11-7, 8-11, 11-13 (3-2).

Segun Toriola gallantly lost in the mens singles semi-final to Finland’s Benedek Olah.

Jieni Shao

Olah who was making his debut at the Nigerian competition said that he was happy to achieve his target.

“ I aimed at wining the mens singles and I achieved it. It is sad to see that Quadri Aruna could not make it.

“ I was looking forward to seeing him as well as play with him,” he said.

Wahid Enitan-Oshodi, the President,Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) commended Nigeria’s representatives noting that they did well.

“There are rooms for improvememt and I know we can do better. I am pleased that we were able to expose our junior players.

“ So many of our U-16 players participated and thats a good one,” he said.

NAN reports that the five-day competition served off May 18 and ended May 22 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Indoor Sports Hall of the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.

No fewer than 115 players from 14 countries including host Nigeria participated.

Nigeria was represented by 76 players which comprised 47 males and 29 females.

The countries are Portugal, Russia, Hungary, Egypt, Finland, Slovakia, Romania, Mexico, Ghana, Congo Brazzavillie, Morocco, Tunisia, Cameroun and Nigeria.

The total prize money was 46,000 dollars,which is the highest prize money in the ITTF world tour.