NAGOYA:
Myanmar’s Wai Khin Hnin on Sunday turned the primary Asian Video games gold medallist in teqball, an acrobatic football-table tennis hybrid making its debut at this yr’s occasion in Japan.
Watched by Barcelona and Spain soccer legend Carles Puyol, Wai Khin Hnin beat Indonesia’s Sumaya, who goes by one title, 2-1 within the remaining to seize the inaugural girls’s singles title.
Teqball was invented 14 years in the past in a storage in Hungary and options gamers kicking a ball over a curved desk, incorporating parts of the southeast Asian sport sepak takraw.
The game has grown rapidly and featured on the 2023 European Video games.
Wai Khin Hnin misplaced the primary set of the ultimate however got here again to win 10-12, 12-8, 12-9 and declare gold.
“I am delighted, I am grateful to my head coach for believing in me and choosing me to play within the girls’s singles. I believed that I may do it,” she mentioned.
“My subsequent objective is to win the gold medal for Myanmar on the 2027 SEA Video games.”
The competitors has seen a various vary of gamers vying to turn into the Asian Video games’ first teqball medallists.
The Philippines males’s group featured three 14-year-olds together with Prince Agustin, who misplaced within the singles bronze-medal match.
Japan had been represented by Takahiro Nodomi, who additionally works as a comic.
“I performed soccer till highschool, gave up, began teqball in my late 30s, and made it to this massive stage at 40,” he mentioned.
“If the message that ‘even previous guys can work laborious’ reached everybody, then I really feel I used to be in a position to launch some ‘previous man energy’.”
Indonesia’s Husni Uba represented his nation in sepak takraw at 4 earlier Asian Video games.
“After I used to be accomplished with the sepak takraw competitors on the 2018 Asian Video games I did not count on to be again once more, particularly for teqball,” mentioned the 44-year-old.