IPC celebrates Nigeria’s para table tennis couple heading to Paris

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has celebrated Nigeria’s para table tennis couple, Christiana and Kayode Alabi, who are preparing to feature at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in France.

The IPC on its website described the couple as role models for athletes across the globe.

‘Meet Para table tennis power couple Christiana and Kayode Alabi, who are preparing to represent Nigeria at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games this summer,’ IPC stated.

Recalling how they met, IPC wrote, ‘Nigeria’s Para table tennis power couple Christiana and Kayode Alabi met through the sport and spend most of their waking hours striving to get better, aiming for success at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

‘In September 2023 they won their respective events at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) African Para Championships in Giza, Egypt, which doubled as a qualification opportunity for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. That gave them plenty of time to prepare for the Games – and they sure do.

They met at the 2017 national trials in Lagos, Nigeria. ‘I won all my matches and was playing very well,’ Alabi said.

‘So Ifechukwude (Christiana) came and said she would love to be performing like me. I said, ‘you are good, but if you want to perform like me you need to train hard and train like me. We started to play together and I told her, ‘this is how you do this, this is how you do that’.”

Christiana had grown up playing table tennis, even though there had been no table nor any bats.

“I loved it, even when I was very little and I used to play on the street,” she said. “There was no table tennis table in my village. From when I was seven, we used little wooden benches on the street. We played with golf balls using bathroom slippers as racquets. I didn’t know that I could have it as a career.”

One day she met a man from an indoor sports club, who invited her to play table tennis there.

“He asked me if I wanted to be a sportswoman and I said yes. He took me to a stadium and there were some girls already playing. The coach asked me to come back and play some other time, with a racquet,” Christiana said.

“I went to my father and asked him for a racquet, and he went to a carpenter. But when I brought the racquet to the stadium, they were laughing at me because it was made of plywood and didn’t have the right shape.”

Since 2019, however, she has been training with Kayode and both of them are now the best in Nigeria. In 2021, Christiana won a bronze medal at the French Open, in her first trip out of Africa.

“He taught me everything about table tennis – how to serve, how to be in the right position – everything,” she said.

Kayode was more than happy to help Christiana to the top.

“I loved her from the first time I set my eyes on her because she’s very calm in everything she’s doing,” he said.

After their first meeting, the couple stayed in touch over the phone. Christiana, who is from the state of Delta, a seven-hour journey from Lagos, kept talking about how she wanted to improve her table tennis. She did not have any family in the former Nigerian capital, but Kayode encouraged her to train.

“I kept on encouraging her that I will take care of her and after a bit more than a year she decided to come to Lagos. In 2019, I started training her to become what she is today,” Kayode said.

“That’s how we started living together five years ago, and that is how it has been since then. I’m No. 1 in the country in my category, she is No.1 in her category, because I am the one who trained her from the start, from level zero.”

They tied the knot in November 2022 and continue to strive to become better athletes together.