The World Table Tennis Family descends to Paris for the 2013 World Table Tennis Championships which take place between the 13th and 20th of May.
At the Press Conference to mark the start of the Championships President of the French Table Tennis Federation Christian Paliérne when welcoming people to Pairs said “This tournament is a great competition and we have great volunteers, we look forward to this event being a success”. Defending Men’s Singles World Champion Zhang Jike from China said “The Important thing is to win the match, not the ranking”
The entry stands at quite an astonishing 463 Men and 360 Women and the draw took place on Saturday the 11th of May. The Titles up for grabs are the Mens and Ladies Singles, Mixed Doubles and Mens and Ladies Doubles.
Team Ireland is Paul McCreery, Gavin Maguire, John Murphy and Sarah Timlin. All the players are playing in the Singles events and McCreery and Maguire team up for Mens Doubles and Murphy and Timlin team up for Mixed Doubles Event.
All Team Ireland are involved in Qualification rounds over the next two days.
Gavin Maguire is ranked at 832 and was draw into Group 73 and faces Tomas MIKUTUS from Lithuania (WR 355) and Zhasur KHUDAIBERDIEV from Kyrgyzstan (No WR).
John Murphy is ranked at 803 and was drawn into Group 78, he will play Pierre-Luc THERIAULT from Canada (WR 379) and Nigel WEBB from Jamaica (No WR).
Paul McCreery is ranked at 551. He plays in Group 87 and faces Omri BEN ARI from Israel (WR 411) and James PINTEA from Canada (WR 725).
Sarah Timlin also has no World Ranking and was drawn into Group 42 her opponents are Anqi LUO from Canada (WR 392) and Fatiha BOUCLARAS from Algeria (WR 906).
In the Mens Doubles Maguire and McCreery will play a pairing from Lebanon; Mohamad EL HABECH and Malek EL TAWIL, neither player has a current World Ranking.
In the Mixed Doubles, Murphy and Timlin will play Nirmala JAYASINGHA and Nuwani G. VITHANAGE from Sri Lanka again neither player has a World Ranking.