Table tennis star concedes defeat in Euro quarter-final
ATABLE tennis star who took up the sport in Widnes admitted his disappointment after being defeated at the quarter-final stage of the European Para Table Tennis Championships in Slovenia.
Jack Hunter-Spivey made his Paralympic debut in Rio last September and aimed to use that experience to challenge for his first medal at a major championship.
The 22-year-old competed at the tournament in Lasko which runs from Thursday, September 28, to Wednesday, October 4.
He defeated Milan Zelen from Serbia 3-0 in his first match at the tournament in the men’s class 5.
After a tight first set, he lost his second group match 3-0 to his great friend and regular team partner, Tommy Urhaug, the former Paralympic ● champion and World number one from Norway.
But he secured his place in the quarter-finals with a comfortable 3-0 win against Gerardus Van Grunsven from the Netherlands.
Jack led the men’s class 5 world number two Ali Ozturk 2-1 in their quarter-final but the fourth set proved crucial and after edging that 11-9, the Turkish player ran away with the fifth set to clinch the match 3-2.
He said: “I’ve had a good tournament and applied what I was doing in training.
“But I’m very disappointed as I feel I could have won that match and a medal was mine at some point. That’s just the way it goes.
“I played a good level of table tennis but he is world number two and he was better than me on the day.
“I’m up there but I want to be winning – as an athlete you always criticise yourself and at the moment I’m just really disappointed that I lost but when I look back I’ll probably feel it was a good performance.”
Jack started playing the sport at a youth club in Widnes and later joined the Halton Table Tennis Club.