By Donald Duff
in St Lucia
Despite her exceptional play in the women’s team event where she led Guyana to a silver medal, Trenace Lowe was surprisingly seeded ninth for the individual women’s singles competition which served off yesterday afternoon at the Beausejour Indoor Facility here in St Lucia.
Bob Roopnarine of Trinidad and Tobago, who is in charge of the tournament, said that this is because the organizing committee used the world ranking to seed the players.
Lowe‘s only defeat in the team competition came at the hands of Trinidad and Tobago’s France based semi-professional player and the defending women’s champion Rheann Chung.
But Lowe was the only player to win a game off Chung in the entire team event.
Trinidad’s Dexter St Louis told Stabroek Sport in an invited comment that the organizers should rethink their policy of using the world rankings to seed the players as players from French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique which are all French territories and come under the flag of France will be unable to achieve a world ranking.
St Louis said that because the organizers want to make it an ITTF tournament, they are using ITTF rules.
On another note, the organizers allowed two players from Martinique to enter the boys’ 21-years and under singles after the draws for the quarterfinal matches were made. According to Roopnarine the players had entered the draw but a blackout at the venue caused the two players’ names to fall out of the main draw which was posted on the wall at the venue.
Yesterday morning the players were entered into the draw.
According to Roopnarine the U21 and Masters (Veterans) events are fun events and he said he wanted to accommodate the two players from Martinique in the spirit of goodwill and because the error was his and because they do not speak English which he said might have led to them not fully understanding that their names were not in the draw.
