Wednesday’s elections were held at LATTU’s Annual General Assembly meeting in Guatemala City, plotting the way forward for the next four years that Vila of Dominican Republic and Uribe of Colombia will be in power to build upon the significant successes achieved by the sport in South & Central America and the Caribbean.

Not only has the region developed a number of exciting talents in recent years, but has staged increasingly impressive events, not least the Universal 2019 ITTF Pan American Cup in February, which set a very high benchmark in terms of the commercialisation and professionalisation of table tennis events even on a global level.

“I want to thank the enormous support received from the LATTU General Assembly membership and commend their excellent behaviour, civism and democratic vocation. I congratulate also Eng. Benjamin Real for his candidature and interest in seeking the best for LATTU. During the next four years, I want LATTU to consolidate the progress made over the last four in which, for the first time in history, we have players from the region ranking among the top 10 in the globe and aspiring for World and Olympic medals. Latin America is fully committed to the World Table Tennis Championships reform and we can already see the positive effect that the new system is having on the regional championships.”

Juan Vila, LATTU President

For the new four-year cycle, LATTU’s Executive Committee was ratified and Paul Calle of Ecuador was confirmed as treasurer after Jorge Herrera resigned his duties in the role to fully focus on his duties as Regional Director of LATTU for the ITTF.

The Annual Meeting, which recognised a minute’s silence for Dexter St. Louis, the Trinidadian table tennis player who recently passed away, also saw reports approved for the year 2018 to then give space to the nominations and elections of venues for the four Latin American events scheduled for 2020.

Cuenca, Ecuador, will host the U-11 and U-13 Latin American Championships, having already held the recent and successful South American Championships in the same age categories.

The U-15 event will take place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with the Master event in San José, Costa Rica, and the Seniors event in Lima, Peru. The latter city is also hosting this year’s Pan American Games, which act as qualifiers for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.