The Montenegrin table tennis players, Paralympians Filip Radović and Luka Bakić, arrived in Granada, Spain, and did their first training ahead of their appearance at the World Championship, the Paralympic Committee announced.
After four years, Granada gathered the best table tennis players in the world, and 333 competitors from 51 countries of the world arrived in the south of Spain.
The Montenegrin duo, led by coach Nikolae Lupuleskupa, will fight for the first world medal, the only one missing from the Montenegrin Paralympic movement.
At the end of the qualification cycle, Radović performed as the best junior in the world (players under 23 years of age) and third in the senior rankings.
Bakić earned his place at his first World Championship as the current fifth player on the Table Tennis Federation's World Pairs list.
In Granada, in the category S10, a total of 16 players will perform, namely the five best ranked from five continents, the best table tennis player under 23, the seven best from the world list and three players who received a special invitation.
It will be Radović's second appearance at the world championships, after he was stopped one step away from a medal in the quarterfinals in Celje in 2018.
He won medals at the European Championships - bronze in Vejle, Denmark in 2015 and Laško in 2017, and silver in Helsingborg, Sweden in 2019.
He is the holder of the only Paralympic medal for Montenegro, the bronze from Tokyo in 2021.
Bakić, who will make his debut at the World Championship, is the winner of the team bronze medal from the European Championship in Helsingborg in 2019, in the team with Filip Radović and Dejan Bašanović.
The championship will officially start tomorrow with matches in the doubles and mixed doubles competition.
The individual part of the championship will start on Wednesday, while the competition in the S10 category will start a day later.
The championship in Granada will be played according to a new system - the group competition will be replaced by the knockout phase and elimination matches from the round of XNUMX.
The organizer announced that 152 doubles matches will be played on the first three days of the championship - 82 standing players and 70 players in wheelchairs.
The men's and women's singles competition will begin on Wednesday and will feature a total of 315 matches - 183 in standing categories and 132 in wheelchairs.
The performance of Radović and Bakić in Granada is financed by the funds of the Ministry of Sports, allocated for the program of the Paralympic Committee for 2022.
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