MADRID, Jan. 21 (SportsFinding) –
The Spanish table tennis teams begin their journey on Wednesday in search of the ticket to Tokyo in the World Team Pre-Olympic Championship, which is held from January 22 to 26 in Gondomar (Portugal) and will distribute nine Olympic seats per category.
The women's team, led by Silvia Erdelji, will face in the semifinals in an unprecedented duel to Britain this Wednesday (2.30 pm). María Xiao, Galia Dvorak, Sofía-Xuan Zhang and Ana García will be in charge of fighting for a place in the final.
Meanwhile, in the men's team, the team led by Víctor Sánchez will be measured with Sweden, third European power and that counts among its ranks with continental number 1, Mattias Falck. However, Álvaro Robles, Carlos Machado, Jesús Cantero and Carlos Franco will seek to reissue the 2018 victory, when Spain beat the Scandinavian team in the opening match of the European League of Nations.
In the Pre-Olympic Portugal, Spain will look for one of the nine Olympic places awarded by this championship. The competition format will be divided into two phases; The first will consist of eight groups, with four teams in each that will face in direct qualifiers. The winner of each group will get the ticket to Tokyo 2020, and the finalist will enter the second phase.
In this second phase, the previous eight finalists will face each other in a draw in direct qualifiers, where there will only be one winner who will get the ninth pass and the direct classification for their team and players to the Tokyo Olympics.