The 2022 Table Tennis Australia Veterans Nationals Championships wrapped up over the weekend following a week of competition in Darwin. Our Team Vic Vets brought home 22 medals including six gold, seven silver and nine bronze in the singles, doubles and team’s events across the ten age categories.

“All of us at TTV would like to congratulate the fantastic payers who represented the blue and teal at last week’s Veterans Nationals, especially all of our Team Vic medallists,” Said TTV CEO Gen Dohrmann.

“It’s wonderful to see these events finally running again and seeing the National community come together.” She added.

The strong O/30 Men’s quartet of Craig Carter, Christopher Dobrovic, Partha Gogoi and Harsh Madaan performed as well as everyone expected, the team defeated Queensland in the final to bring home the title. In the O/30 Women’s, Anushka Fernando, Shantelle Hives, Cheryl Huang and Yoke-Ching Tan won their final match to claim the bronze medal.

Vicki Carruthers, Chrissy Jones, Debbie Wilson and Willa Yu also added a bronze to the haul for Team Vic in the O/60 Women’s Teams event, as did the O/65 Men’s side of Paul Bronstein, Jeff Dever, Mikail Geller and Felix Kung.

In the O/75 Men’s, John Bowers, Kennan Pun and Mick Wright were defeated by a strong Presidents side of Jim Findley, Igor Klaff and William Weinstock in the gold medal match to come home with the only team’s silver for Victoria.

Individually and in doubles our Team Vic players collected five gold, six silver and six bronze to bring the tally up to 22 overall.

Craig Carter went down to New Zealand’s Barry Griffiths in the final of the O/30 Men’s Singles to earn Victoria’s first silver whilst Cheryl Huang claimed gold in the O/30 Women’s Singles. Carter did make it on to the top step of the podium alongside Partha Gogoi in the O/30 Men’s Doubles. Huang paired up with Anushka Fernando to take silver in the O/30 Women’s Doubles before Huang and Carter finally teamed up to win silver in the O/30 Mixed Doubles as well.

Gogoi then backed up his performance with a bronze in the O/40 Men’s singles defeating Queensland’s David Lu. In the O/50 Women’s Singles, Belgin Bennett took silver after going down to New South Wales’ Amy Zhang.

Debbie Wilson and Vicki Carruthers joined forces in the O/60 Women’s Doubles to add another bronze to Team Vic’s record. Mikhail Geller and Paul Bronstein did the same in the O/65 Men’s Doubles defeating NSW duo Anthony Kwok and Calvin Law. Whilst Judy James and Jeanne Strong also took down a pair from NSW in the O/65 Women’s Doubles bronze medal match. Strong then paired up with Paul Bronstein to win the bronze in the O/65 Mixed Doubles.

Finally, it was stalwart Igor Klaff winning our final three medals with a gold in the O/80 Men’s Singles, a gold in the O/80 Men’s Doubles alongside Werner Borkhardt (QLD) and a silver in the O/80 Mixed Doubles with South Australia’s Gwenda Rapley.

“As Manager I received fantastic feedback about Victoria being the most friendly State at the tournament. I noticed some great team spirit amongst Victorians working against the odds and some fantastic individual efforts to bring home medals.” Said Team Manager Daisy O’Bryan.

For all the results from the 2022 Veterans Nationals please click here