Tin-Tin Ho happy with performance despite putting Olympic dream on hold

Tin-Tin Ho was happy with her performance if not the result as she had to put her Olympic dream on hold for a few weeks at least. 

The Paddington athlete was in action at the world singles qualifying tournament in Doha, Qatar, where there were five singles places at the Tokyo Games up for grabs. 

She started with a good 4-1 (11-6, 11-6, 11-9, 4-11, 11-6) victory over Ruta Paskauskiene of Lithuania but was then beaten 4-2 (11-6, 6-11, 11-3, 9-11, 11-5, 11-5) by Ukraine’s Margaryta Pesotska in the next round. 

Pesotska is ranked No 32 in the world, 61 places above Ho, but the Englishwoman was in the match for long periods and is in good heart ahead of another chance to seal a Tokyo spot at the European qualifying tournament in Portugal next month. 

The 22-year-old said: “I would have liked to have qualified, obviously, so I didn’t reach the goal. 

“But I’m happy with how I played in the last match so if I can build on that and use it to play better, then hopefully I can get better results at the European qualifiers. 

“It was my first international competition for a year and it was a really good standard and there were quite a lot of upsets and close matches. It was good to get good practice and to see the top players up close. 

“There will be a lot of good players at the European qualifiers, so hopefully I can use this experience to my advantage.”