Muscat: Oman’s blue badge umpire, Aisha al Saidi, was selected to officiate the WTT Youth Contender Luxembourg 2024 which started at Centre National Sportif et Culturel Luxembourg on Wednesday. Aisha, who received the blue badge in March 2022, is attending in many of the WTT events as she recently had officiated at ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships 2024 in Busan, South Korea last February.
Beside that she was available as umpire in many other events including: WTT Star Contender in Lanzhou, China and Virtus Global Games, Vichy in France and ITTF World Youth Championships 2022 in Tunisia. The four days event in Luxembourg featured many events including: U19, U17, U15, U13 and U11 for Boys Singles, Girls Singles and Mixed Doubles. The Omani referee, who hails from Saham, officiated in different games for majority of the categories including the knockout stages.
Al Saidi began her career in umpiring in 2016 through some international refereeing courses organised by the Oman Table Tennis Association (OTTA). Later, she had developed and managed to earn the international umpire level before claiming the blue badge in March 2022.
The OTTA is very keen to provide a suitable environment for developing and improving the national umpires besides opening the floor for them to attend in the regional, continental and international events.
The Omani umpires affirmed their impressive show in different top table tennis events in the last couple of years after they had received and grabbed the required technical experience. It is expected that some of the international Omani umpires will attend in the forthcoming major table tennis events including the ITTF World Masters Championship which will be held in Rome, Italy in coming July as the Sultanate of Oman had hosted the last edition in Muscat in 2022.
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