Will Bayley

Will Bayley at Gwangju 2010 World Championships

William 'Will' Bayley (born 17 January 1988) is a British table tennis player. He competed at the 2008 Summer Paralympics and was the 2011 European champion for his classification.

Personal life

Bayley was born on 17 January 1988 in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.[1] He was born with arthrogryposis which affects all four of his limbs.[2]

At the age of seven he was diagnosed with cancer, during his recovery he began playing table tennis after his grandmother bought him his first table.[3][4][1]

Table tennis

At the age of 12 he joined the Byng Hall Table Tennis Club in Tunbridge Wells and went on to represent Kent's able bodied men's team.[4] From the age of 17 he has lived and trained at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.[5]

He represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, where he was knocked out of the table tennis C7 singles in the preliminary round after defeats against Germany's Jochen Wollmert and Ukraine's Mykhaylo Popov and a single victory against Shumel Shur of Israel.[6] He also competed in the C6-8 team event along with Paul Karabardak and David Wetherill; they were eliminated at the quarterfinal stage.[4] In 2009 he won gold medals at the Czech and German opens, in 2010 he took golds in Lignano and Brazil.[2]

Bayley won a gold medal in the singles at the 2011 European Championships in Split, Croatia. He also won a silver medal in the men's Team event class 7, playing alongside Karabardak. At the end of 2011 he was voted the European Players' Player of the Year and in January 2012 he achieved the world number one ranking.[4]

Bayley has been named as one of thirteen players in the table tennis squad for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.[7][8] The table tennis events are scheduled to be held at ExCeL London from Thursday 30 August to Saturday 8 September.[9]

He won a silver medal in the London 2012 paralympics after losing to Germany's Jochen Wollmert in the class 7 final.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 "Will Bayley - Paralympics GB". The Telegraph. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  2. 1 2 Chowdhury, Saj (21 August 2012). "Paralympics 2012: Bayley targets number one spot". BBC Sport. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  3. ↑ "Will Bayley Q&A". Channel 4. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Will Bayley". British Paralympic Association. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  5. ↑ "Paralympian Will Bayley hoping to make Tunbridge Wells proud at London 2012". Kent and Sussex Courier. 11 July 2012. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  6. ↑ "Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games Table Tennis Men's Singles 7". International Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  7. ↑ "London 2012 Olympics: Will Bayley named in ParalympicsGB squad". BBC Sport. 25 January 2012. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  8. ↑ "ParalympicsGB: Who will compete for Great Britain in London?". BBC News. 26 August 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
  9. ↑ "Table Tennis - About". The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Limited. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  10. ↑ "London 2012 Paralympics: Will Bayley wins table tennis silver". BBC Sport. 2 September 2012. Retrieved 2 September 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, November 13, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.