Olympic-bound paddlers leave for exposure trip

New Delhi – Olympic-bound paddlers Soumyajit Ghosh and Ankita Das with 13 other table tennis players left here Wednesday to participate in the Swedish Open and Brazil Open tournaments.

The team will first take part in the ITTF Euro African circuit event at Helsingborg, Sweden from Friday till Tuesday. The Brazil Open, an ITTF World Tour meet, will be held June 13-17 in Santos.

Ghosh and Ankita will be able to compete and assess themselves before the London Games scheduled for July 27-Aug 12. For the rest of the contingent, the tournaments will give them an opportunity to improve their world rankings.

Both Ghosh and Ankita were confident of a good showing at the two events and said the timing of playing in the two events was perfect.

“We badly needed the exposure at this stage. It will help me and the coach to assess our discrepancies before the Olympics,” said Ghosh.

Ankita seemed a bit anxious about competing in her first ever Olympics.

“Since this is our first Olympics, there is bound to be some nervousness. Our coaches have been egging us on to take it as another championship. Yes, the stage is very huge and we will definitely give our best shot,” said Ankita.

Team –

Men: Soumyajit Ghosh, Anthony Amalraj, Achanta Sharath Kamal, Subhajit Saha, Sanil Shetty, Soumyadeep Roy, Harmeet Desai.

Women: Ankita Das, Poulomi Ghatak, Mouma Das, Moushmi Paul, Divya Deshpandey, K. Shamini, Manika Batra and Poja V Sahasrabudhe.

Coaches: Bhawani Mukherjee; Leszek Roman Kucharski.