RRI Sports Club
A Romanian performance in table tennis
Florin Orban, 03.12.2025, 13:33
Cluj-Napoca, in western Romania, recently hosted the World Youth Championship, an annual table tennis competition for juniors. The best Romanian player in the contest was Iulian Chirita who obtained two medals, one silver, and one bronze.
He won silver in the under 19 double mixed competition. Chiriță and the Welsh Anna Hursey had made it to the finals, which they lost 1-3 to Hechen Li and Yuxuan Qin of China. In the men’s double contest, Iulian Chiriță and Tiago Abiodun of Portugal made it to the semifinals but failed to qualify after losing 3-0 to Ryuusei Kawakami and Kazuki Yoshiyama of Japan. Chiriță was also close to a medal in the singles, but was stooped in his tracks by Kazuki Yoshiyama of Japan who secured a 4-1 win. At the previous edition of the aforementioned competition, Romania obtained a bronze medal thorough its Under-19 men team.
Iulian Chiriță is one of the most valuable young table tennis players in Europe. He was born in the Republic of Moldova on February 2, 2006 and took up tennis at the age of 6. He came to Romania with his family and settled in Câmpulung Muscel, where he joined his first table tennis club together with his brother Cristian. In 2021 he was on the first position in a ranking of the world’s best under-15 table tennis players. In 2022 he signed up with Rapid Bucharest.
Romania was eliminated from the mixed contest of the World Cup for senior players. In Chengdu, China, Romania lost 8-6 to France. After 5-8 against Germany and 8-2 with Brazil, Romania came third in the group with four points and had to leave the contest. We recalled that Romania ranked fourth at the last year’s edition of the aforementioned competition.
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