Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

Some Lesser Known Facts About Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

• Sathiyan Gnanasekaran is an Indian table tennis player and the first Indian paddler ever to reach the World Top 25 ITTF rankings in 2019. He held the 24th position in the world rankings, which was also his career-best.

• Sathiyan started playing table tennis as a hobby in school, and he started competing in inter-school events. This was the time when his skills were noticed by the former Indian paddler and Arjuna awardee Subramanian Raman. During this time, Sathiyan had started playing tournaments, and he was pursuing his engineering degree.

  

• Subramanian insisted that Sathiyan should focus more on his table tennis practice instead of taking the engineering route. He began his training under Raman’s guidance and began participating in junior-level state and national competitions. He made his international debut in the 2011 World Junior Championships for India and won a bronze medal for the team.

• Sathiyan was facing difficulty in moving from junior to senior-level games as he couldn’t find a breakthrough point in the senior competitions. He went to Germany to get proper training and won his first pro title by winning a gold medal in TT singles at the ITTF Challenge in Belgium in 2017. In 2017, he won a bronze medal in Men’s Doubles at the ITTF Major in Sweden and then went to ITTF Challenge in Bulgaria, where he won a silver medal.

  

• In 2017, Sathiyan won his second consecutive gold medal in singles in ITTF Challenge Spain and became the first Indian Table Tennis player to win two Pro Tour titles. In April 2018, Sathiyan went on a medal streak when he won gold, silver, and bronze medals in the men’s team, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles, respectively, in Commonwealth Games that took place in Gold Coast, Australia.

• In 2018, Sathiyan made his Asian Games debut in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Indian men’s team won a bronze medal after sixty years.

• In 2019, he reached the quarterfinal of Men’s Singles while competing at the Asian TT Championships, becoming the first Indian paddler to reach the quarterfinals of the tournament in the Men’s Singles category in 43 years.

• Sathiyan competed in the men’s doubles with Achanta Sharath Kamal at the 2020 ITTF World Tour in Hungary and won a silver medal. Due to his constant performance in the past few ITTF tournaments, Sathiyan was selected for his Olympics debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Unfortunately, Sathiyan lost the second round of the Olympics to Hong Kong’s Lam Siu-hang.

  

• Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Sathiyan was expected to stay sharp and practice at home to prepare for the upcoming tournaments. Sathiyan imported a ping-pong robot from Germany to practice at home. During the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sathiyan went back to individual training and roped in a local player to help him practice. He converted the rooftop of his house into a sports hall and ordered a table similar to the ones used in Olympics to play on.

  

• While Sathiyan is a professional table tennis player, he still has a regular job as a Senior Executive Human Resources at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

• Sathiyan Gnanasekaran is a part of a group of 19 athletes that are being supported by the GoSports Foundation under the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme.

• In 2015, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost his father to cancer. Both his elder sisters are married, and he lives with his mother in Chennai.