By Tate Papworth
The world’s best junior table tennis players showcased their talent in Sunshine West last week.
Simon Gerada, a former Olympian and owner of Loops Table Tennis, said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get the world’s best to Brimbank.
“The junior world championships are being held in Bendigo in early December and obviously with athletes coming from all over the world, they’re not just going to arrive the night before,” Mr Gerada said. “They needed a venue to train, so I thought what better opportunity.”
Mr Gerada said 15 players in the world’s top 20 trained at Sunshine West for six days.
“We had players from Romania, Russia, Poland, France, USA, Canada and Australia,” he said. “It was amazing to see how intensely they train. We held two sessions a day for six days, with a third session at eight [pm] each night.”
However it wasn’t all business.
“We took them out to get to see Melbourne a bit too,” Mr Gerada said.
“They went for a tour and dinner in the city one night and another day we took them to Werribee Zoo.
“A lot of them hadn’t seen kangaroos or koalas before, so we wanted to make it a great experience.”
