Top local junior table-tennis players Arun Roopnarine and Aaron Wilson will depart tomorrow for a five-week training stint at the Werner Schlager Table Tennis Academy, in Vienna, Austria.
Fifteen-year-old Roopnarine, who attends Presentation College, Chaguanas, and Wilson, 14, a student at Belmont Boys Secondary, were part of the T&T squad which captured a record 12 medals (one gold, one silver and ten bronze) at the Caribbean Table Tennis Federation Cadet & Junior Championships which concluded at the Jean Pierre Complex, Mucurapo, a week ago.
The duo will be at the Austria camp from Tuesday until May 21 at the expense of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) which includes training costs, entry fees, accommodation, meals and transport with the players covering their own travelling expenses from T&T.
At the conclusion of the camp, Wilson and Roopnarine, winners of bronze in the Junior Boys Doubles at the regional event in T&T will then compete in the Polish Open from May 22 to 26.
The opportunity for the local pair came via the ITTF “WFIM” (With The Future In Mind) programme which targets potential participants for the Junior Olympics in Nanjing, China, next year. The qualifying process is tough and the players must have high world-ranking points.
The ITTF also recommended Wilson and Roopnarine attend the Polish Junior Open which is a World Junior Circuit event.
The training for both T&T players with coaches Richard Prause, Dirk Wagner, Dimitri Levenko, Aya Umemura and will entail two sessions per day.
Practice is twice a day—from 9.30 am to noon and from 3.30 pm to 6 pm or from 6 pm to 8.30 pm, depending on the group they are in and where they will practise, all based on their table-tennis skills. Additionally, they have fitness at the gym and sometimes a table-tennis session will be replaced by a fitness session.
At the Caribbean Cadet and Junior Championships, Roopnarine and Wilson also helped the T&T Junior Boys team to a bronze medal along with Sarvesh Mungal and Andreus Pantin-Abraham.
In the Mixed Cadets Doubles, Wilson paired with senior national women’s champion, 14-year-old Brittany Joseph for bronze and also got bronze in the singles, while Roopnarine and Catherine Spicer got T&T’s lone gold medal, in Juniors Mixed Doubles.