MINSK, 21 March (BelTA) – Vladimir Samsonov, the leader of the Belarusian national table tennis team, has won the Belarusian Table Tennis Open Championships for the fourth time, BelTA has learned.
The Belarusian defeated Wang Zengyi of Poland 4-2 in the Belarus Open 2017 final to secure the title. The two rivals previously met at the Belarus Open 2014, with the Belarusian player celebrating the victory that time as well. The athlete, who turns 41 on 17 April, stated after the tournament that he has plans to pay more attention to his health in order to recover from a busy sports schedule.
The men's doubles event was won by the Polish duo of Wang Zengyi and Daniel Gorak.
The women's singles final saw Hitomi Sato of Japan beating her fellow Japanese Honoka Hashimoto 4-1. Belarus' Viktoriya Pavlovich went out in the round of last 16 after losing to Japan's Takako Nagao 3-4. The women's doubles gold went to the Japanese duet of Miu Kato and Misaki Morizono.
The Belarus Open 2017 gathered the record number of participants in Minsk: nearly 200 athletes from 29 countries.
Head coach of the Belarusian national team Alexander Petkevich noted that the Belarus Open 2017 was the main rehearsal ahead of the 2017 World Table Tennis Championships that are due in Dusseldorf on 29 May – 5 June. Prior to the global sports forum, the Belarusian national teams will hold playoff matches for the right to be in the elite division of the ETTU European Team Table Tennis Championships. The Belarusian women's national team will host the team of Wales in Minsk, while the Belarusian men's national team will play an away match in Hungary on 10 April. Return games are scheduled for 18 April.
