Dubai: Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna won the men’s player of the year award at the annual International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Star Awards ceremony at the Armani Hotel in Downtown here on Wednesday.
Aruna beat off competition from China’s World No. 1 Xu Xin and Youth Olympic champion Fan Zhendong, as well as European Team Championships gold medallist Marcos Freitas of Portugal.
“This is the best day of my career and my life,” said the African Cup champion, who started 2014 ranked as world No. 237 and ended it at No. 30, the highest ever ranking for an African player. “I feel so great to be the winner in the midst of the world’s superstars. This award means the world to me.”
Aruna’s point against China’s Zhang Jike at last year’s ITTF Men’s World Cup was also named point of the year.
Meanwhile, world No.1 Ding Ning won the women’s player of the year.
Spain’s Alvaro Valera and Croatia’s Sandra Paovic won the men’s and women’s para table tennis player of the year awards respectively.
Portugal’s European Championship-winning coach Pedro Rufino won coach of the year and Austria’s Liu Jia won a the fair play award for admitting to an infringement unseen by the referee in a game against China’s Li Xiaoxia at last year’s ITTF Women’s World Cup.
Awards were decided by 60,000 international votes, combined with the judging results of an expert ITTF panel.
