Muscat, Jan 14
Oman is all set to begin the action of 2023 ITTF World Veteran Championship - Muscat 2023 which will start in Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre on Sunday and will run for one week.
The official opening ceremony will take place on Sunday under the auspices of His Highness Sayyid Fahar bin Fatik al Said at the OCEC auditorium in presence of Petra Sorling, ITTF President, Khalil al Muhannadi, President of Asian, Arabian and Qatar TT associations, besides top dignitaries.
The opening ceremony will feature speeches by the organising committee and the ITTF president. A mixture of different heritage musical chapters and digital shows will be presented in the opening ceremony too.
As many as 1, 600 participants representing 69 nations arrived in Muscat.
The participants are representing different countries including: Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, China, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Moldova, Mongolia, Monaco, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Scotland, Singapore, Slovenia, Serbia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan, Finland and the Sultanate of Oman.
Oman Table Tennis Association (OTTA), in coordination with International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and under supervision of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, confirmed completion of all the technical and logistics preparations for the world class TT event in Muscat. All the tables and flooring were installed in the venue beside additional lightings according to the international requirement of ITTF. The paddlers began their warm-up sessions in the venue on Saturday and they will continue gearing up on Sunday ahead of the competitions start on Monday.
Technical meeting
The technical meeting of the championship took place and competition schedule was released to all the participants. The competitions will be in daily basis starting at 8 am to 9 pm from Monday until closing ceremony on Saturday. Players will range from the age of 40 to over 85 and will compete in different age categories with 44 world titles to be won. The championships will be staged throughout OCEC, utilising the three exhibition halls for more than 130 competition spaces.
As many as 100 umpires will be officiating the tournament matches. The referees are from Sultanate of Oman and other worldwide countries including umpires with blue, white and international levels.
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