After awarding the hosting rights to Nigeria to stage the maiden Africa Top 16 Cup, the International Table Tennis Federation has again considered Nigeria worthy by listing the Lagos Classics in its 2014 World Tour.
Disclosing this at the weekend, the President, African Table Tennis Federation, Khaled El-Salhy, quoted the Chief Executive Officer of ITTF, Judit Farago, as confirming the development.
El-Salhy said: “ITTF CEO has confirmed the approval of ITTF to include your very successful event ‘2nd Lagos International Classics’ among the GAC World Tour Calendar of 2014, which means the following: the event will be treated as a part of the top professional circuit of ITTF which is GAC Group World Tour, as an ITTF sanctioned event.
“It will be automatically uploaded on the ITTF Calendar of 2014 together with ITTF-Africa Top 16 Cup without any additional fees from NTTF, while the event will get higher ranking in 2014 than whatever applied for the current year with no World Tour.
“This will ensure better attraction from the top players to participate and gain more points and also to qualify for World Tour Finals.”
The tour will hold in Lagos from June 23 to 26, while the Africa Top 16 Cup will follow the tour from June 27 to 28.
Within three months of assuming office, the present board of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation, presided over by Wahid Oshodi, has brought vibrancy to the game, with the staging of the Lagos Classics and other national competitions, which table tennis buffs believe would help the game to grow.
In 2014, there will be 21 World Tour events in 21 different countries, which portrays how global the 2014 ITTF World Tour is.
According to the ITTF, the world’s best players’ main goal on the tour is to gain enough points from these 21 events to qualify for the $1 million World Tour Grand Finals to be held at the end of the year.
“The ITTF is very happy about the high level of interest to be on the tour and the number of new associations that applied to host a GAC Group 2014 World Tour event,” stated ITTF CEO, Judit Farago.
Farago added: “With the varied locations across the world, 2014’s tour gives an opportunity to every professional table tennis player to play on the world stage. The ITTF World Tour (previously called Pro Tour) is into its 19th year in 2014 and it is to our greatest satisfaction that it reaches out to all five continents.”
The GAC Group 20014 World Tour is split up into 3 tiers, the highest being the Super Series, then the Major Series and Challenge Series. The higher the tier, the more prize money and ranking points will be on offer.
In 2014, the Korea Open has been promoted to the prestigious Super Series circuit, joining the same countries that hosted a Super Series in 2013, Kuwait, Qatar, Germany, Japan and China, to form the top tier of the GAC Group 2014 ITTF World Tour.
The Major Series, which is the next highest tier, will see the world’s best table tennis players head to Europe’s traditional Open events: Sweden, Russia, Spain and the Czech Republic.
Australia, Philippines, Nigeria, Chile and Argentina are the new faces in the Challenge Series, which shows the true extent of the growth and demand of table tennis across the globe.
Philippines, Nigeria and Argentina will make their debut on the tour next year, Australia was last time a host in 1999, while Hungary, Belgium and Chile come back after one year of absence to the Challenge Series.
Joining these new destinations are experienced organizers like Croatia, Belarus, Brazil and Morocco.
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