Oshonaike, Edem scale table tennis preliminaries

Nigeria’s pair of Offiong Edem and Funke Oshonaike made it to Round 1 of the women’s Singles at the on-going Rio Olympic Games in Brazil, handing their opponents defeats in the Table Tennis event yesterday

Edem was too strong for her counterpart from the Fiji Islands, Sally Yee, winning 4-0.

On her part, Oshonaike’s opponent, Lebanon’s Mariana Sahakian initially led the game, before the Nigerian came back to finish with a 4-3 victory.

Oshonaike, who is making her sixth and final appearance at the Olympics, was expected to go against Adriana Diaz of Puerto Rico in her Round 1 match later yesterday, just as Edem engages Viktoria Pavlovich in a battle of superiority by 7.15pm.

Other African representatives in the preliminaries also scaled through to the next round, as Congo’s Xing Han out-served Ian Lariba of the Philippines (4-0), while Egypt’s Dina Meshref overpowered Tunisia’s Safa Saidani (4-0) to advance from the first stage.

Meshref will face Thailand’s Nanthana Komwong, as her compatriot Nadine El-Dawlatly squares off with Petra Lovas of Hungary. Han was due to face Thailand’s Suthasini Sawettabut later in the evening.

Seven-time Olympian Segun Toriola was billed to begin his campaign in Round 1 of the men’s singles late yesterday against Czech Republic’s Dimitry Prokoptsov. The veteran will hope to record a much better performance than his London 2012 feat.