TABLE TENNIS – ALI Mohamed claimed Bahrain’s maiden victory in the table tennis competitions of the third Asian Youth Games yesterday to advance to the boys’ singles knockouts.
Competing in Group A of his tournament’s preliminary round, Mohamed defeated Muhammad Imran from the Maldives in three games 11-3, 13-11, 11-3.
It was the sole triumph for the Bahraini paddlers in the opening stage for the boys, which featured 19 pools in total, with all action being held at Exhibition World Bahrain (EWB). The top two from each group made it through.
Mohamed had earlier lost his opening contest on Sunday against Seungsoo Lee from South Korea 2-11, 4-11, 2-11, but his win against Imran was enough for him to march forward.
He has now qualified for the first elimination round, where he will take on Abdulaziz Al Abdulla from Qatar.
This was confirmed last night by an official from the Bahrain Table Tennis Association.
Elsewhere in yesterday’s boys’ singles matches, Bahrain’s Majed Hashem lost to Bilguun Ankhbayar from Mongolia 11-7, 9-11, 11-9, 7-11, 5-11 in a tightly contested Group O contest that went the maximum. In Group E, Adam Teraif went down fighting to Michel Abi Nader from Lebanon 9-11, 4-11, 7-11.
Both Hashem and Teraif missed out on qualifying for the ensuing elimination phase.
On the distaff, Bahrain’s Dana Alkhayyat lost to Zi Sian Chong from Singapore 5-11, 4-11, 11-13 in Group J of the girls’ singles competition.
In Group I, Bahraini Rayan Rashed succumbed to Chisa Cachamit from Thailand 5-11, 4-11, 7-11.
Both Alkhayyat and Rashed thus lost both their matches in the girls’ preliminaries, and they both did not advance to the knockouts.
In table tennis’ mixed doubles round of 32, Hashem and Alkhayyat lost to Ruixuan Yao and Hechen Li from China in three games 5-11, 1-11, 4-11.
Meanwhile, the badminton competitions got underway yesterday in the third Asian Youth Games, held at Isa Sports City’s Hall D in Riffa.
Bahrain’s entrants all bowed out from further medal contention.
In the boys’ singles round of 64, Ali Alashoor lost to Cris Ivan Dosano from the Philippines 5-21, 9-21.
Noor Hasan was eliminated from the girls’ singles following a 4-21, 3-21 defeat to Han Bi Kim from South Korea in their round-of-64 contest.
In the mixed doubles round of 32, Alashoor and Hasan lost to Keneth Aruggoda and Sithulo Ranasinghe from Sri Lanka 20-21, 4-21; while fellow-Bahrainis Sayed Hasan and Zainab Sowaid lost to Haoyan Qiu and Yue Yu Lie from China 5-21, 4-21.
In the Asian Youth Games’ weightlifting events at EWB, Bahrain’s Hussain Dawood Abdulla was in action in the boys’ 65kg Group B. He finished fifth, registering a 72kg lift in snatch and a clean and jerk best of 85kg, for a total of 157kg.
Winning gold for total at 276kg was Duy Nguyen Thanh from Vietnam, while Beibarys Yerseit from Kazakhstan claimed silver at 275kg and Jin Myong Choe from North Korea captured bronze with a 274kg total.
Choe took the snatch gold with a 124kg lift, one kg better than silver-medallist Yerseit and two ahead of bronze-medallist Abdullah Ibrahim Almohaimeed from Saudi Arabia. In clean and jerk, Thanh captured gold at 156kg, Bohang Wang from China took silver at 155kg, and Yerseit won bronze at 152kg.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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