Date: 2012-07-29

Segun Toriola, one of Nigeria's medal hopefuls at the ongoing London Olympics yesterday emerged winner in men's table tennis singles preliminaries by beating Canada's Andre Ho 4-1.

Toriola won at ExCeL in London to reach the next round.

The full results in the Toriola-Ho encounter were 9-11, 11-5, 11-6 11-5 and 12-10
Kim Song Nam of North Korea also beat Timothy Wang of U.S. 11-5, 11-4, 11-7, 11-4 .
The tournament between Andy Pereira of Cuba and Yoshua Shing of Vanuatu ended up in 11-2, 11-2, 11-3, 11-3.

Justin Han of Australia defeated Mawussi Agbetoglo of Togo by 9-11 11-7, 11-1 8-11 11-8 11-9 , while Ibrahim Al-Hasan of Kuwait beat Saheed Idowu of Congo with 11-3, 8-11,7-11, 13-11, 11-6, 11-6

The London Olympics is the sixth appearance by Toriola who is ranked as the best Nigerian table tennis player since 1995. The 37 year-old indegene of Ilorin, Kwara State capital was also Africa's number one between 1998 and 2008. He regained the title in 2009 and has remained so ever since.

Some of the previous laurels of Toriola include:
*4 African Table Tennis Singles Championships (1998, 2002, 2004, 2006) and 2 Doubles Championships (1994,1992)

A Commonwealth Singles Championship (2002) in Manchester (United Kingdom)
A Commonwealth Doubles Championship and Singles Bronze Medal (2006) in Melbourne (Australia)

4 All-African Games Singles Gold Medals (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007),4 Doubles Gold Medals (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007), 1 Mixed Doubles Gold Medal (1999, with Bose Kaffo; they also won silver in 2003) and 3 Team Gold Medals (1995, 1999, 2003).

His Olympic debut was at Barcelona in 1992, while his most notable achievement at the Olympics has been reaching the Men's Singles 1/8 final at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, beating amongst others, former world number 1 Jean-Michel Saive.