Sathiyan Gnanasekaran is an Indian table tennis player, currently ranked at 32 in the world as of April 2020. He was a member of the Indian team that took the bronze in the 2011 Junior World Championships. In May 2019, Sathiyan attained his career best World ranking of 24 and became the first Indian paddler ever to break into the World Top-25 ITTF rankings. He had recently been signed up with Okayama Rivets for the Japanese T-league. He is currently coached by Olympian & former international Table Tennis playerRaman Subramanian. He is currently being supported by the GoSports Foundation through the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme.
Personal life
Sathiyan was born and brought up in Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. He is an international table tennis player and a qualified engineer in Information Technology. He graduated from St.Joseph's College of Engineering, Chennai.
Achievements
Sathiyan announced himself in the world stage in Table Tennis when he won the ITTF Challenge Belgium Open title in the men's singles category in September 2016. This was his first ITTF pro tour title. In the final match played at De Haan in Belgium, he defeated the local player Nuytinck Cedric with a 4-0 score in the final - with 15-13, 11-6, 11-2, 17-15. With this victory, he became the first Indian table tennis player to win an ITTF event on European soil. 2017 had been a special year for Sathiyan where he won gold in the ITTF Challenge - Spanish Open, in Almeria in the men's singles category and created history by becoming the first Indian Table Tennis player ever to win two ITTF pro tour titles. In April 2018, he won three medals in his debut Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast, Australia. He also played an important role by winning both his matches against Japan in the Men Team category quarterfinals and won a historic bronze medal at the Asian Games 2018 held at Jakarta for the first time ever after a gap of 60 years. In September 2019, he pulled off the biggest win of his career by defeating the Japanese prodigy Harimoto Tomokazu in straight sets at the Asian TT Championships 2019. In the same event, he also gave a stellar performance by becoming the first Indian ever after a gap of 43 years to reach the Quarterfinals in Men Singles category. In 2019, On Friday, 29 November, Sathiyan made his debut World Cup appearance and defeated higher-ranked Frenchman Simon Gauzy 11-13, 9-11, 11-8, 14-12, 7-11, 11-5, 11-8 before beating world number 24Groth Jonathan of Denmark 11-9, 7-11, 11-5, 11-6, 11-2, to top his group and reach the round of 16 in 2019 ITTF Men's World Cup. The world number 30 G Sathiyan, went down 1-4 to Timo Boll in the pre-quarters.
