Olympian to join Lapu tourney

FORMER Olympian Jan-Ove Waldner, a Swedish table tennis player, confirmed his participation in the 9th Lapu-Lapu Minzhi Cup International Table Tennis Championship on Nov. 14-21 at the Lapu-Lapu City Hoops Dome.

This was disclosed by Table Tennis Association of the Philippines (Tatap) president Ting Ledesma , who is expecting more than 1,000 participants coming from Shanghai, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Macau and host country Philippines.

Waldner, who has represented Sweden five times in the Olympics, rarely joins this kind of competition.

“We are fortunate that in our first hosting, we have top caliber players like him joining the tournament. It was Donic Philippines distributor Handel Yap, based in Lapu-Lapu , who requested Donic Germany to have Waldner come to Cebu this November,” Ledesma said.

He added that they decided to bring the tournament to Cebu due to its strategic location and Cebuanos should take advantage of this opportunity not only to watch Waldner and the rest of the veteran players, but as well as get the chance to play against one of them.

“With Lapu-lapu hosting, we are going to put up 30 tables, which means we can accommodate more than 600 players. We welcome local players; the more the merrier,” Ledesma said.

Ledesma, who is a former national player, joined last year’s event in China, which attracted 600 players.

Ledesma said that this is open to all local players, who will be required to pay a fee.