Two teenage Taiwanese paddlers on Saturday won gold for Taiwan at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Youth Championships in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Seventeen-year-olds Kuo Guan-hong and Hsu Hsien-chia captured the U19 boys’ doubles title after edging Japan’s Ryuusei Kawakami and Kazuki Yoshiyama in a five-game final at BT Arena.
The Taiwanese duo looked set to close out the best-of-five match in straight games after taking the first two 11-4, 11-9, but their Japanese opponents rallied to even the score, claiming the next two games 13-11, 11-9.
Photo: screen grab from the Taiwan Cooperative Bank
Table Tennis Team’s Facebook page
In a tense decider, Kuo and Hsu stayed level with their opponents before pulling ahead with two straight points to seal the match 11-9.
The victory marks Taiwan’s first gold in the U19 boys’ doubles event since the former U18 World Junior Table Tennis Championships were reorganized into the ITTF World Youth Championships (U19 + U15) in 2021.
In 2021, Kuo and Hsu also won Taiwan’s first, and only, U15 boys’ doubles gold, defeating another Japanese pair in the final at Nova Gorica, Slovenia.