The lone Indian pair of G. Sathiyan and Manika Batra will face its toughest test yet in the World mixed doubles Olympic qualification event to be held in Havirov, Czech Republic on April 11 and 12.
The duo will meet Greece’s Georgios Stamatouros and Malamatenia Papadimitriou in the first round. The top four pairs will make the cut for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The tournament will consist of two stages, each of which will have two knockout (KO) draws, each of 16 pairs. Every day, two KO draws will be played. The 32 teams have been divided into two halves for the first set of knockouts (KO1 & KO2), with the winner from each half progressing to the Olympics, on the opening day.
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With two pairs making the cut, the remaining 30 will have to compete for the remaining two spots. On the second day, the pairs will be seeded based on the first day’s performance, and they will again be divided into two halves (KO3 & KO4). This has been done so that all the pairs get two opportunities to qualify for Paris.
The Sathiyan-Manika duo have not been in the best of form. The best it could perform this year in the seven tournaments it competed in was reaching the final of the WTT Feeder II tournament in Beirut in March. In the summit clash, it lost to a much lower-ranked Indian pair of Akash Pal and Poymantee Baisya after having five match points. However, Sathiyan and Manika have been training hard having arrived in the city on Tuesday and are looking forward to a good result.
Speaking to Sportstar, Sathiyan admitted it’s been a tough journey for the pair, but appeared positive. “It’s been topsy-turvy in the last few months. We lost a lot of close matches. Of course, it’s a big and tough tournament. We will try and give our best. It is good that we are getting used to the conditions in Europe. We have got good support from the Table Tennis Federation of India where a physio has been arranged. We are prepared.”
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