The thunderous applause was for the loser, not the winner.
The women’s team table tennis round of 16 match at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Arena in South Paris, France, on Friday (local time). The crowd gathered here gave an emotional ovation to “one-armed” table tennis player Bruna Alexandre, 29, of Brazil, not South Korea, who won the match 3-1.
Aleksandr doesn’t have a right arm. It was amputated when he was just six months old due to thrombosis, a side effect of a vaccine.
Playing with only his left arm, Aleksandr’s serve is unconventional. He holds the ball in his left hand on top of a ping-pong stick to keep it aloft, then hits the ball with his left hand again on the way down to send it across the net. It took him two to three years to perfect his serve.
The method is unique, but the power is the same. “His serve was no different from any other player’s,” Lee Eun-hye (29, Korean Air), who faced Alexandre in the fourth singles, told the press after the match.
This is a result of Aleksandr not defining himself as a ‘limited’ person with a disability. He doesn’t even remember having a right arm, and having ‘one arm’ has never been a limitation when it comes to trying and challenging himself.
He started playing table tennis at the age of seven. At first, it was difficult to develop his balance. He used futsal and skateboarding to get in shape and eventually made the national team four years after he started playing. Since then, she has been on the rise. She won bronze medals in the women’s singles and team events at the 2016 Paralympic 파워볼사이트 추천 Games in Rio de Janeiro, and silver in the singles event at the 2021 Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
It was only natural that she decided to compete in both the Paralympic and Olympic Games. “I can serve like a person with two arms,” he told the Olympic Organizing Committee in June. I may fall, but I can reach every ball. Disability is nothing. We can do everything,” he said encouragingly.
Alexandre is the first Brazilian athlete to compete in both the Paralympics and the Olympics, and only the second table tennis player in the world.
His role model is Natalia Partica (POL), the first Para table tennis player to compete at the Olympics. Partica, who is also missing her right arm, is a “living legend” who has competed in four Olympics and has won six gold, two silver, and two bronze medals at the Paralympics.
Like Partica, Alexandro now hopes to become a role model for others. “I’m happy to represent the disabled and show that everything is possible, that’s my driving force,” he said, “I hope that one day it will be normal for a disabled person to play against someone with two arms.”
Alexandre’s Olympic schedule came to a close on Sunday with a 0-3 loss to Shin Yubin (20-Korean Air) and Jeon Ji-hee (32-Mirae Asset Securities) in the first doubles and a 0-3 loss to Lee Eun-hye (32-Korea Asset Securities) in the fourth singles.
However, the Paralympic Games, which begin on Aug. 28, await him. He will try to win his first gold medal at the Paralympic Games, and he has ambitious plans to return to the Los Angeles Games in four years.