Belarus table tennis captain Vladimir Samsonov has qualified for the Tokyo Olympics with his ranking, and the 45-year-old will embark on his seventh career trip to the Olympics.
Samsonov was born in 1976 and has won the World Cup singles title three times. In the 1999 World Cup, Samsonov defeated Kong Linghui in the group stage. In the 2001 World Cup, he swept Wang Liqin in the final. In the 2009 World Cup, the 33-year-old won consecutive victories over Ma Long and Chen Xuan and reached the top again. Samsonov has never been absent since his first Olympic games in 1996, and tokyo will be the seventh Olympics in his career. In the six previous Olympic Games, Samsonov's best result was to finish fourth in the men's singles in Rio in 2016.
In the latest Olympic qualification rankings released by the International Table Tennis Federation, Samsonov ranked 29th. Although he failed to qualify for the World Qualifiers and European Qualifiers, he qualified for the Tokyo Olympics with a high qualifying snub, equaling the record held by Person, Grand Sever, Primorats and Ségou Torriola for seven consecutive Olympic games.