Indian American table tennis star Kanak Jha has qualified for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. And this will be his second Olympic stint.
Jha and Lily Zhang are the first two table tennis players to qualify.
According to teamusa.org, both qualified for the games by merit of being the highest-ranked American in their gender in the February ITTF World Rankings. Jha is 25th, while Zhang is 28th. Jha’s career-high ranking to date was 22nd in September 2019.
The Milpitas, Calif.-based table tennis player made his Olympic debut in Rio in 2016, competing in both singles and doubles. In the 2014 ITTF Men’s World Cup, Jha became the youngest ever to play in the world cup at age 14.
Two years later, he became the first athlete born in the 2000s to qualify for a U.S. Olympic Team.
He competed at the Summer Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 and earned bronze, the first men’s Olympic or Youth Olympic table tennis medal for the U.S. In July 2019, Jha became the first American to four-peat in men’s singles at the national championships.
The US Olympic table tennis team will consist of three men and three women.