Turkish table tennis player (born 1993)
Sibel Altınkaya (born 1 February 1993) is a Turkish table tennis player. She qualified to participate at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France.[1]
Sport career
Altınkaya started her table tennis playing career in 2003. She won many domestic championships. In 2008, she debuted internationally.[2] She has Balkan Championships and seven consecutive European Championships titles. She is coached by her spouse Ufuk Altınkaya.[3]
As of 25 June 2024, she ranks 91st in the world list. Her highest rank was 71st in April 2023.[2] End June 2024, she transferred to Fenerbahçe Table Tennis.[4][5] She is right-handed, and attacks shakehand.[6]
She took the silver medal in the team event at the
2018 Mediterranean Games in Tarragona, Spain.[4]
She competed in the team event of the European Championships in 2019 in Nantes, France and 2021 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
She and her teammates failed to advance to the second round in the doubles event and to the third round in the mixed doubles event at the 2021 World Championships in Houston, United States.
She participated at the 2022 WTT Singapore Grand Smash, where she was not able to qualify for the main tour.[7]
At the 2022 Mediterranean Games in Oran, Algeria, she ranked fifth in the singles and seventh in the team event. She so improved her rank in the world list to 89th.[8]
She won the bronze medal in the singles event,[9] and the silver medal in the team event at the 2021 Islamic Solidarity Games in Konya, Turkey.[10]
In the doubles and mixed doubles events at the 2023 World Championships in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, she and her teammates lost the first round.[11]
She lost the first round in the singles event at the 2023 European Games in Kraków, Poland.[12]
After gathering points at the 2024 WTT Star Contender Ljubljana,[3] Altınkaya qualified to represent her country at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France after her achievement at the WTT Star Contender Ljubljana 2024.[1][5] She lost the Round of 64 match against the 61-year-old Chinese-born Ni Xialian from Luxembourg by 2-4, and was eliminated.[13]
Personal life
Sibel Altınkaya was born in Adana, Turkey on 1 February 1993.[6][5] She married to Ufuk Altınkaya, a table tennis coach since 1998, whom she met at the Turkish Championships in Marmaris in 2014.[3]
References
External links
