BEN RAMAGE

Paisley para table tennis star Martin Perry ended his year with a stunning gold medal at the China Open.

Teaming up with Thomas Rau from Germany, he took top spot in the men’s class 6 team event in Hangzhou.

Perry and Rau beat Kazuki Shichino and Junki Itai from Japan 2-0, and followed that up with a 2-0 win against the Egyptian team of Ibrahim Hamadtou and Mahmoud Abdelmagid Bashir.

Their final match in the roundrobin event was against the Korean/ Russian team of world number five Hong Kyu Park, Sungil Kim and Mars Gabdullin and they clinched the gold with a solid 2-0 win.

Perry admitted lifting the gold made up for a disappointing singles result, which saw him uncharacteristically fail to make it out of the group stage.

“I feel that the tournament overall has been a hard one to judge,” Perry said.

“I had a very strong group in the singles and was obviously disappointed coming all this way to not even progress from my group.

“The team event was good. I feel Thomas and I had a good relationship; we had some good banter and I really enjoyed playing together.

“We were both a bit disappointed that China pulled out as of course it would have been great for us to have a chance of beating them.”

Perry was glad to be handed the responsibility of playing the singles ties by Rau, who had progressed further into the singles tournament.

And with the China Open representing Perry’s last competition of 2019, he’s happy with his development this year which has included a run to the last eight of the European Championships and a bronze medal at the Para Copa Cristina Hoffman Tournament in Mexico.

He said: “Thomas had a very good singles tournament and was happy to sit back and believe in me for each match playing as number one.

“We played very good doubles and I was able to go and win the singles.

“I had some tricky matches and found a level I was happy with.

“It’s not the best way for me to end my 2019 but I’m of course happy to be coming home with a team gold.”