by Neha Aggarwal

Adopting one of the most unique approaches to raise awareness and funds for its athletes, the Fiji Table Tennis Association hosted a table tennis marathon at its national training centre. The activities started on Friday 25th November at 6.00pm and concluded on Saturday 26th November at 6.00pm.

This unique event was hosted to increase awareness and raise funds for Fiji’s Para table tennis players, who will be departing for a training camp and will further take part in the New Zealand Para Open in December; also for Fiji’s National Junior Girls’ team who qualified for the Sun International 2016 World Junior Championship to be held in Cape Town, South Africa from Wednesday 30th November to Wednesday 7th December 2016.

Some players also took part in the five kilometre Dash for Diabetes on Saturday 26th November. The event was open to public to join the teams and make donations.

Fiji’s Harvi Yee, who took part in the marathon posted pictures of the group after 12 hours of non stop table tennis:

The group also did their own mannequin challenge:

Anthony Ho, the President of Fiji Table Tennis Association was the brainchild behind this event and promoted heavily on social media. He kept updating the progress during the 24 hours on his facebook page. In his posts he informed about the hours completed with pictures of players playing at the marathon.

At the end he said:

Brilliant way to support a wonderful cause, congratulations to Fiji Table Tennis Association and all the players and other participants for organizing this unique event.

The next event will be on Saturday 3rd December 2016 from 9am onwards to celebrate International Day for People with a Disability at the Fiji’s national table tennis center.