Australia ready themselves for 2021 ITTF World Youth Championships

Australia is ready to face the world’s top juniors at the 2021 ITTF World Youth Championships set to kick-off on Thursday 2 December (Central European Time) in Portugal. 

The team of Nicholas Lum, Finn Luu, Chulong Nie, Parleen Kaur and Connie Psihogios, have gathered in the host city, Vila Nova de Gaia, and had their first official training session on Tuesday.

For a handful of players, the tournament marks their first international competition since the 2019 Junior World Championships due to travel limitations and cancelled events from the COVID pandemic.

“Heading into the World Championships, I don’t feel too bad. Kind of nervous though as I haven’t played any competitions in a while,” said Kaur, who competed at the event in 2019. 

“I just want to play my best, it is my first competition in a long time. So I just want to play the best I can and hope for the best.”

Kaur said her performance at the 2019 event was one of her best, and is looking to replicate the performance this week. 

“I probably would say that was my best World Junior Championship. I had a few wins, I was playing top players and I was playing at my best that time so I want to go into this competition playing the same way,” she added.

Australia is shaping up to face the world’s best including medallists from the last World Championships such as Japan’s Miyuu Kihara and Haruna Ojio - two silver, two bronze, Chinese Taipei’s Feng Yi-Hsin - silver and bronze and China’s Xiang Peng - two golds, two bronze.

TTA's National Head Coach John Murphy knows the challenges the team faces but also sees the opportunity in competing at such a high level event alongside  

“It's the stage that we want our players to be competing at, and obviously, all the players have qualified to be here so that's already a great achievement,” he said.

“Obviously the best players in the world are here so the matches will be difficult but at the same time, our goal is winning matches.

"We've obviously prepared well for the last 18 months - the whole squad have.  I mean we haven't had international competition, but we've had two practices per day in Melbourne and around the country to prepare the players.” Murphy added. 

Kaur, much like Lum when we spoke to him last week, is taking preparations in her stride.

“I go into these events just thinking that everybody is the same, there's no good or bad, just everyone's good. So I need to play my best, just be confident and go in with a positive mindset,” she said. 

Despite the lack of international competition due to border restrictions internationally and locally, preparations have gone well as training took place throughout Australia.

Murphy particularly credited the efforts of National Coach – Performance Pathway (Able-Bodied) Eva Jeler and Performance Pathway Manager (Able-Bodied) Simon Gerada to help players to prepare.

“The results we’ve achieved so far in Europe since we restarted international competition proves that the structure that we have currently in the TTA High Performance is working. This is obviously the next step -  performing at a World Youth Championships,” Murphy said.

“While I'm the coach here with the team and have been on the European tour, there's a lot of other coaches namely, Simon and Eva, who have been instrumental in preparing the players. They have put in a big shift over the last 18 months and more to prepare these players.”

Australia will begin their 2021 ITTF World Youth Championships campaign in the Under 19 Boys Teams event, where they’ll face China, before the doubles and singles competition start on 4 December.

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