Iran’s table tennis squad experienced attendance in 2012 London Olympics with Noshad Alamian as well as Neda Shahsavari in Men and Women sections, respectively while the squad left Tehran for Hong Kong on Monday evening to determine status for 2016 Olympic Games.
The men's team members for the Asian Qualification Tournament comprises of Noshad and Nima Alamian, Afshin Norouzi and Midia Lotfollahinasab. The women's squad consists of Neda Shahsavari, Mahjubeh Omrani, Maryam Samet as well as Elena Titarenko.
Jamil Lotfollahinasab and Sima Liuchi will be the two coaches accompanying the team for the qualifying event.
The top 22 male and top 22 female players on the International Table Tennis Federation's Olympic ranking list as of May 2016 will be qualified for the singles event at the Games while no nation can have more than two players per gender in the singles at these Games.
All the eight players will be first competing in the Central Asian region qualification, which is Stage 1 of the event where Iran will compete against Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Iran has hopes of two Olympic berths (one man and one woman) from this event which is attended by 11 and 10 table tennis players in Men’s and Women’s sections, respectively.
But for the other two berths (one man and one woman) the next opportunity for the rest of the squad members comes from Stage 2 which is the Asian Qualifiers.
The 2016 Asian Table Tennis Qualification Tournament, the Qualification Event for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro, will be held from 13th to 17th April 2016 in Hong Kong.
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