(by Steve Hopkins)

This is a Butterfly Favorite.  To set the stage, Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna had won the Africa Cup two years in a row.  The Africa Cup serves as that continent’s qualification event for the World Cup, and like North America, there aren’t a lot of athletes that qualify by World Ranking so winning this event is the only sure route to the World Cup and to the Olympics.  Omar Assar of Egypt entered this event in the shadow of Aruna.  He had had his successes and had competed in the 2012 Olympics, but in major competitions he had yet to break through to the next tier.

But this was a changing of the guard in African table tennis. The 2018 African Cup saw Assar excel through the draw and then finally overcome his top rival.  The final helped launch him to a rating peak, and he came back in 2019 and won the title again.

A message from Omar Assar.  Assar uses a customized Butterfly inner fiber carbon (very similar to the ALC Innerforce Blade) and Tenergy 05.  Check out the Timo Boll ALC ST Pro-Line (an ALC blade with Tenergy 05 pre-assembled)