One of the factors about the forthcoming 2024 Olympics that gives Prithika Pavade some comfort is that venue of the table tennis event in Paris, South Paris Arena, is a half-an-hour drive from her club, Saint-Denis US 93 Tennis de Table and training centre INSEP. Besides that, athletes perform their best at home, under familiar conditions, which provides Pavade the chance of a lifetime.
France’s second-highest-ranked female table tennis player is of Indian origin, tracing her roots to Pondicherry and ranked 32 in the world in singles. With Camille Lutz, Pavade is ranked 15 in women’s doubles and 25 with Simon Gauzy in mixed doubles — giving her a reasonable optimism for a medal. Besides, the team event is another category where she could aim for a podium finish with France.
The 19-year-old would already be playing her second Olympics — she lost in the qualifying rounds of the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, making her one of table tennis’ bright hopes outside of the world of Chinese domination.
“I am super excited about it (Olympics in Paris), because it’s the biggest event in almost every sport,” Pavade said at the WTT Star Contender in Goa where she lost in the second round of singles in late January. “I know that our generation is really lucky to have the Olympics at home. This is crazy because it’s also really close to where I live, where my parents are living, from my first school where I started to play, my current club also.
“When it will come, I will be, of course, a little bit nervous but like the most important for me is just to enjoy the moment and try to perform well,” said Pavade, speaking English with a strong French accent.
The left-hander started playing TT when her father, who had moved to France from Pondicherry in 2003, a year before she was born, introduced her to the sport just as a means to keep her in shape. She was about six-seven years old, going to a gymnasium that was a two-minute walk from their apartment and she fell in love with the sport.
Withing a year and a half, she vaguely recollects, she started to beat her father, who may or may not have been hurt by the student surpassing the teacher. “He never told me, but I think yes. It’s normal I mean (for him to feel bad), he loved also the competition,” she said, laughing. “But he always tried to push me to be better, become a better person, a better player. So he was for sure happy for me.”
Competition after competition, she just increasingly aspired to achieve something bigger. By the age of nine, she had won the French Championships in the under-12 category, the French Cadet Championship at age 12, which marked her out as one of the club’s future Olympic candidates.
“I would say (by age) 11-12 years old, I was like, okay, maybe I can do something good in this sport. But it (the decision to pursue a career in the sport) didn’t come in one shot, you know, it was like, slowly. But at the end, I’m happy with this choice,” said the left-handed player.
As the second highest ranked singles female player from France — behind Jia Nan Yuan at No. 19 — Pavade still has to qualify for the Olympics in the mixed doubles, which she is playing with Felix Lebrun, who won the singles title in Goa. The pair made the mixed doubles final in the WTT Contender event in Antalya last year and she was also in the final of the women’s doubles (with Lutz) in the WTT Contender in Aman.
“We are trying to qualify for this event (Paris). Like we have two teams, Alexis (Lebrun)-Yuan and Felix and me. So we have five months to try to qualify and we will see which pair is better ranked, having better results in the next months. But yeah, of course, it’s an aim to qualify,” said Pavade, who also speaks a smattering of Spanish and can understand a bit of Tamil.
She manages her studies in university, science in the first year of college, thanks to the French system of encouraging athletes while allowing for flexibility in academics. “I cannot study like a normal person,” she said, “but still for me it’s important to do something other than sport.” Besides, there are other teenage stuff she is keen on, like being lazy, hanging out with friends, and binging on OTT.
She wants a long career, to win the biggest titles in the sport, like the European Championships, World Championships and the Olympics. “I want to be able to do something great, to be one of the best players in history,” Pavade said.
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