Damascus-SANA
Despite losing and bidding farewell to the competitions, the 12-year-old Syrian table tennis player, Hind Zaza, grabbed the media spotlight at the Tokyo Olympics as the youngest player to participate in this important global event.
Zaza made the achievement early since she grabbed the Olympic qualification ticket by winning the West Asian Championship, and the eyes of the Syrians and the world are looking forward to her as a champion who writes a new history for Syrian sport, regardless of the outcome.
At dawn today, the date of her match against the Austrian "Chinese-origin" veteran Liu Jia, 39, who lost by four games to none, 11-4, 11-9, 11-3, 11-5.
Zaza, who competed with adults and presented herself as a promising talent for the future, the Arab and international media devoted wide areas to talk about it, while it became the talk of social networking sites, as its pioneers lavished words of praise and support, in addition to expressing pride in the good performance that it provided, especially in the second half, which ended with a close result with veteran Jia. .
The meetings and interviews of the heroine Zaza with Arab and international news agencies and channels, in which she touched upon the insistence on participating in this global sporting event and how Syrian sport and its champions overcame the difficulties and conditions that surround their homeland as a result of the war and siege, and in the world as a result of the epidemic, so that Syrian sport is present in this important event.
In an exclusive statement to SANA, Zaza revealed that the match was very difficult and I tried in the second half to return to the atmosphere of the meeting and competition after the first loss, and I was close to achieving progress, but the last points failed me, and in the end the sport won and lost.
Zaza added that participation in the Olympics is very useful in terms of entering into the atmosphere of international competitions, indicating that other important benefits await her, most notably the Arab Championship next August, the Arab Clubs Championship at the beginning of next September, the Asian Championship in mid-September and the International Federation Championship in October, promising her fans to win bright medals in tournaments aforementioned.
“Next time, I will work hard to pass the first, second and third rounds because I want to play more in the Olympics,” Reuters quoted Zaza as saying, noting that her message to any athlete in this same situation is to fight for his dream regardless of the difficulties faced. face him.
BBC reported that the Syrian Hind Zaza, the youngest player in the Tokyo Olympics, booked her qualification for the Olympic Games after she won first place in the West Asian Games in Jordan, defeating her Lebanese competitor, who was more than thirty years older than her.
As for the French news agency, it explained that Zaza took up the table tennis racket for the first time when she was five years old, with the ambition to be the first Syrian representative of table tennis in the history of the Olympic Games and the youngest participant in the Tokyo Olympics at the age of twelve, a dream that came true on an Asian night.
Zaza, born in Hama in 2009, plays in the Governorate Club. She started playing the game in 2014, and in 2015 she won second place for the under-12 category, and first place for the under-12 and 15-year categories in 2016 and 2017, in addition to the first place in the Republic Championship for Women and the National Olympics for Women. In 2018, she achieved first place in Five categories of young, promising, cubs, juniors, women, and fourth place in the Al-Amal Championship in Thailand. In 2019, it won the gold of the National Women’s Olympiad, the bronze of the Oman International U-12 Championship, the silver of Bahrain Championship for the U-13 category, and five gold medals for teams in the West Asian Championship in Jordan, and in 2020 it won the West Gold Asian singles under 12 years in addition to the West Asian gold qualifying for the Olympics.
Mohammed Al-Khater
