After last year’s successful world tour tournament WTT Youth Series, the organizers at Havířov are preparing another edition. The tournament takes place from the 6th to the 12th of June and the fans will see the top players in each category between U11 and U19, including young talents from China.
Hong Kong’s national team arrived in advance to complete a week-long training camp. Seven players are intensively preparing at the National Training Centre for the upcoming tournament. Their coach is Li Ching, a silver medalist in doubles at the Olympic Games in Athens 2004.
More than 300 players from 32 different countries will come to the north of Moravia. They’ll fight for medals and trophies in singles within categories U11, U13, U15, U17 and U19.
The modern centre offers enough room for a couple of hundreds of participants who will compete on nine tables and practice on other 40 tables.
Tournament director Nikolas Endal believes everyone will be satisfied like last time and that the tournament will decorate the series. „It will be one of the last chances to test the form before June’s Junior European Championships in Serbia for youth players. The competition will be enormous. Apart from the Chinese national team, there will also be Japanese players, who are one of the absolute best at the world youth tour.“
There are 54 Czech youth players ready to rival other European talents, among them are current Czech republic champions of each category – Šimon Bělík, Jindřich Morávek, Klára Hrabicová, Hanka Kodetová and others.
Competitions got once again divided into two blocks. Boys will fight for medals for three days after the 6th of June. Girls will begin after a day off on the 10th of June.
World Table Tennis will stream the matches at preferred tables on its website.