Santu rising in the Olympics

Seven athletes from Nepal will participate in the Paris Olympics this year. In the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, the flag of Nepal has been decided to be carried by Santu and Judo's Manita Shrestha Pradhan.

There is a rule of the International Olympic Committee that both male and female athletes should be represented in the opening march for gender equality from the Tokyo Olympics. According to the Nepal Olympic Committee, two athletes have been selected from Nepal.

For the past few years, Santu has been studying in Australia. He is doing Masters in IT. He came to Nepal in the first week of May to compete in Olympic qualifiers. He returned there after securing a ticket to Paris from selection. He decided to conduct more training camps in Australia for skilled aspiring partners.

Coach Rajendra Kapali, who is going to Paris as Santoku's coach, told Kantipur, 'I have found that his preparation is going well. He is regularly sending photos and videos of training. Taking necessary suggestions. If it happened here, he would have had a problem with aspiring partner, whereas he is training with a skilled partner. It has been good.'

Some coincidences of Nepali sports have been connected with Santu Olympic selection. He brought Nepali table tennis to the Olympic stage for the first time and after winning the qualifying tournament, he became the third player of the country to play in the Olympics. He also had the good fortune of qualifying for the Olympics in his home country. For the first time, the South Asian Olympic qualifiers for table tennis were held in Nepal.

The last time Taekwondo's Deepak Bisht was selected and played in the Olympics in Beijing 2008. Before that, Taekwondo's Sangina Vaidya was selected and participated in Greece in 2004. Apart from these two, Santu is the third player to qualify for the Olympics. Table tennis is as old as badminton in Nepal. This year, it is another coincidence that the athletes of both these sports are selected for the Olympics at the same time. From badminton, Prince Dahal is playing the Olympics.

Santu will compete in men's singles at the Paris Olympics. Out of 172 table tennis players, 67 players will participate in men's singles. His opponent for the preliminary round has not been decided yet. Santu is at the bottom of the rankings. Ahead of him are players from Jordan and Moldova. As there are more than 64 players, they will have to compete in the preliminary round to get into the round of 64.

Coach Kapali says, 'Our goal is to improve the world ranking. Kapali says that he is confident that Santu will perform well in Paris as he has been the number one player in the country and has a lot of international experience. Santu never dreamed of playing table tennis because the road to reach the Olympics was very difficult. The chances of getting past the qualifying stage of the Asian level were very low. If the

is at the South Asian level, he was hopeful that he could do well. Santu said after winning the selection, "I didn't believe that I would play in the Olympics." When I got the news about the South Asian selection, then I started dreaming of the Olympics and practiced regularly in Australia.

selection journey

India's participation in the South Asian selection is because the strong team of India has been selected for the Olympics. was not Along with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Maldives were competitors. Because of that, Nepal also had strong potential. On the men's side, Santu and Sanyog Kapali and on the women's side Navita Shrestha and Ivana Thapa competed in the selection. Only the players who were champions on both sides would reach Paris.

Both Nepalese reached the men's final. Even if he won, he was going to make history. Finally, Santu defeated Sanyog in a competitive set 4-3 to secure a trip to Paris. Sanyog is an Olympic scholarship recipient. On the women's side, along with the expected Navita, Ivana also failed to reach the finals. On the women's side, Fatima Ali of Maldives was selected for the Olympics. She became the first Maldivian athlete to qualify for the Olympics by stopping Sri Lanka's Bimandi Bandra in the final.

Santo's game trip

24-year-old Santu is a four-time national champion table tennis player. His ancestral home is in Dolakha. However, he grew up in Koteshwar, Kathmandu. At a young age, he used to go to swimming pools in the company of his brothers. Gradually attracted towards swimming. Swimmed for 3-4 years. He was also learning table tennis at school. Navita Shrestha was the table tennis coach of the Nobel Academy where she studied. When he won a junior tournament in tennis and hung a medal around his neck, his interest in the sport began to grow. Quit swimming immediately. Even after playing for 2-3 years, he did not win a medal in swimming, so he switched to table tennis.

Navita along with her student Santu has played mixed doubles in national and international competitions. They have played together in four international tournaments. Seven-time national women's champion Navita also expects Santu to do well in Paris. She says, "Santu is an attacking player, he likes to play mind games. They can play by understanding the opponent. I believe that he can do better because of that.

His medal journey started with winning bronze in the men's team of the 25th National Table Tennis Championship held in Dhangadhi in 2013. He won the gold for the junior boys of the 36th National Championship held in Kathmandu in 2014. Since then he has continuously won gold in dozens of national competitions. He won four medals including one silver in the 13th South Asian Games (SAG) held in Nepal in 2019. That was a record performance of Nepali table tennis. He is the only player to win four medals in a single edition of the Greens.

Having gained experience in many international competitions including the 18th Asian Games, ITTF World Championship, Santu has won all three types of medals in the South Asian Junior and Cadet Championships. He is a three time NNIPA player of the year and has also won the NSJF Pulsar Sports Award once.