By Victor Kanayo
Nigeria’s table tennis star, Aruna Quadri, despite losing the gold medal to an Egyptian, is still the No 1 best ranked player in Africa according to the latest ranking by the global body, ITTF.
Heritage Times (HT) reports that the Nigerian International suffered a defeat in the final to the Egyptian Omar Assar which made it the third consecutive time he will be losing to the North African in the Games.
According to the latest ranking released by the International Table Tennis Federation, Aruna is placed 11th in the world ranking while African champion Assar is placed 22nd in the World.
Aruna will hope to garner more points when the ITTF open championship resume after the African Games.
Pharaohs Topping Throttle
Meanwhile, the Pharaohs of Egypt have hit a milestone of 100 medals at the ongoing African Games in Ghana to remain runaway leaders and have shown clear indications that they are incoming champions.
Egypt who are also going to host the 2027 edition of the African Games have so far garnered 51 gold, 21 silver and 20 bronze medals as at press time and are 27 gold medal adrift Nigeria who are second on the table.
Nigeria climbed to the second position after an impressive gold medal overhaul through weightlifting, wrestling and Badminton as at end of Tuesday, but are yet to win enough gold medals to enable them close up the gap between her and galloping Egypt.
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Presently, Nigeria have 54 medals comprising of 22 gold, 13 silver and 19 bronze medals, and have failed to win an additional gold in the last 24 hours since moving to the second position.
Algeria’s Shuffling Push
Algeria that initially remained on the third position with 15 gold medals have acquired four more gold medals to close up on the gap between them and Nigeria, and there are indications that if Nigeria does not take any positive step towards improving on their medal performances, the north African side might leap and trail Egypt.
While Nigeria are hopeful on other team sports such as football (male and female), handball, there is also hopes that scrabble, weightlifting, athletics amongst others could inspire Nigeria to increase their quest for gold.
