Brazil’s “one-armed table tennis player” Bruna Costa Alexandre, 28, is continuing her remarkable run at the BNK Busan Bank 2024 World Table Tennis Championships in Busan. Born in 1995, Alexandre had his right arm amputated just three months after he was born due to thrombosis, a side effect of a vaccine. He took up the sport at the age of seven, following in the footsteps of his older brother, who started playing first. Despite the difficulty of serving and handling the ball with only his left arm, he continued to improve and eventually set his sights on the Olympic Games. Alexandre has already made his mark on the Paralympic scene.

He won bronze medals in the singles and team events at the 2014 World Para Table Tennis Championships in Beijing and gold in the team event in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2017.She won bronze in the women’s singles and team event at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games in her home country and silver in the singles event at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Her role model and rival is Poland’s ‘one-armed table tennis legend’ Natalia Partica, a four-time Olympian and Paralympic champion with six gold, two silver and two bronze medals.

In the Women’s Singles Class 10, where they compete, Yang Qian (AUS) is the world No. 1, Partica is No. 2, and Aleksandr is No. 3.Alexandre is hoping to fulfill her dream of competing at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris 2024 this year .If she finishes in the quarterfinals at the Busan World Championships, she will qualify for the team competition in Paris. Alexandre has been on a tear for the Brazilian women’s national team. Competing in Group 1, Brazil won two consecutive matches, the first against South Africa and the second against Luxembourg, thanks to Alexandre’s strong performances .”The Olympics makes me dream,” Alexandre told the Busan World Championships organizers, “I want to show that anyone can do anything, that anything 토토 is possible.”