The Nigerian para-table tennis pair goes to Paris for gold

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has highlighted Nigerian para-table tennis couple Christiana and Kayode Alabi as they prepare to perform at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in France.

The IPC described the couple on its website as role models for athletes around the world.

“Meet Para table tennis power couple Christiana and Kayode Alabi as they prepare to represent Nigeria at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games this summer,” IPC said.

Recalling how they met, IPC wrote: “Nigerian Para Table Tennis couple Christiana and Kayode Alabi met through the sport and spent most of their waking hours striving to get better, aiming for success at the Paralympic 2024 Games in Paris.

“In September 2023, they won their respective events at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) African Para Championships in Giza, Egypt, which also provided a qualifying opportunity for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. That gave them plenty of time to prepare for the Games, and they certainly did that.”

A love story

They met during the 2017 National Trials in Lagos, Nigeria. “I won all my matches and played very well,” Alabi said.

“So Ifechukwude (Christiana) said she would love to perform like me. I said, 'You are good, but if you want to perform like me, you have to train hard and train like me. We started playing together and I said to her, 'this is how you do this, this is how you do that'.”

Christiana had grown up playing table tennis, even though there were no table or bats.

“I loved it, even when I was very little, and I would play in the streets,” she said. “There was no table tennis table in my village. From the time I was seven we used wooden benches on the street. We played with golf balls and used slippers as rackets. I didn't know I could make a career out of it.”

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 already some girls playing. The coach asked me to come and play with a racket again,” said Christiana.

“I went to my father and asked him for a racket, and he went to a carpenter. But when I brought the racket to the stadium, they laughed at me because it was made of plywood and had no shape.”

However, she has been training with Kayode since 2019 and they are now both the best in Nigeria. In 2021, Christiana won a bronze medal at the French Open on her first trip from 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 get to the top.

“I loved her from the first time I saw her because she is very calm in everything she does,” he said.

After their first meeting, the couple stayed in touch by phone. Christiana, who is from Delta State, a seven-hour journey from Lagos, continued to talk about how she wanted to improve her table tennis. She had had no family in the former Nigerian capital, but Kayode encouraged her to study.

“I kept encouraging her that I would take care of her, and after just over a year, she decided to come to Lagos. In 2019, I started training her to become what she is today,” said Kayode.

“That's how we started living together five years ago, and it's been that way ever since. I'm number 1 in the country in my category; she is number 1 in her category because I am the one who trained her from the beginning, from level zero.”

They married in November 2022 and continue to strive to become better athletes together.

“There are many challenges in life. But if you step up your efforts and overcome those challenges, you will become what you want to become in life. We are doing our best to make this happen,” said Kayode.

The couple arrives at the sports hall every weekday to start training at 11am. They train together for two hours, then take a long break for lunch and rest before doing a second workout in the evening and leaving the gym at 6 p.m.

Because the Alabis do not have a car, they usually spend more than seven hours a day in the sports hall. Being together makes their journey easier.

“It's not that easy being a disabled person. We train here to be what we want to be in life. We don't have a car; we have to take a bus. It is a lot of work to go from home to training,” said Kayode. “The same thing: when we go home at night, we have to go to the bus stop together and then roll to our house. There is no shuttle bus that takes us to our place of residence. This is how we manage ourselves every day.”

Preparing for Paris 2024

In preparation for Paris 2024, they have increased their workload and added one gym session per week to the training schedule. However, preparations for their Games debut continue after they leave the gym. When they get home, they watch video clips of their training.

“We watch a lot of videos at home. We normally set up the camera ourselves during our training, so when we get home we look at it and go through it to see where we made mistakes so we can correct them the next day,” said Kayode. “Every day when we go home, we look at ourselves and other people playing, but also at players we have played with before.”

They also see Olympic stars playing, such as China's Ma Long or Nigeria's Quadri Aruna. The first African player to be ranked in the top 10 worldwide, Aruna is a friend and role model.

Kayode Alabi wants to be on top of the podium at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. @ITTF.

“I admire Quadri's performance. He is also an aggressive player, so he doesn't joke about any point, the way I want to play. I also watch Ma Long's matches; He's an aggressive player and I try to do some of what I see them doing.”

The aggressive playing style has earned Kayode his nickname “the lion king”.

READ ALSO: Nigeria dethrones Egypt to win ITTF African Para Championships

“He is always aggressive and attacking in the game. When he plays, he plays like he wants to break the ball,” said Christiana.

The king and queen of Nigerian para-table tennis are not just going to the Paris 2024 Games to participate.

“I believe if we both want to be No. 1 in our country and No. 1 in Africa, we can also be No. 1 in the world,” Kayode said. “So we don't just go there to participate; we go there for a mission that we want to achieve. We want to get the gold.”