JHA Kanak

Grip
Shakehand (ITTF, 02 Aug 2016)

Style of play
Attack (ITTF, 02 Aug 2016)

General
RIO EXPERIENCE
He says he has used his experience from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to help him prepare for the 2020 Games in Tokyo. "Now I have a lot more experience under me. I've seen a lot of what it takes to play at the highest level. When I went to Rio, I was a lot less experienced and I just went in there to enjoy myself and not worry too much about results. I hope by Tokyo 2020, I'll be a different player and we'll go there hopefully with a different mindset." (nbcbayarea.com, 23 Jul 2019; ittf.com, 16 Jan 2020)

TRAINING OVERSEAS
At age 14 he spent time training in Sweden at the Halmstad BTK club under coach Mikael Andersson. He was first introduced to the Swedish coach at age 10 through a talent identification programme arranged by the International Table Tennis Federation [ITTF]. He then relocated to Grenzau, Germany, under the advice of his personal coach Stefan Feth. "Sweden sounded exciting. I loved playing table tennis and training for hours and the opportunity to do that with the best players in the world. It was great. It was time for me to push myself and get out of the comfort zone. Sweden taught me the foundation, but it was time to learn how to step up my game, and Germany was the answer." (hallandsposten.se, 19 Apr 2016; espn.co.uk, 27 Jun 2018)

At age 16 years and 53 days, he became the youngest male table tennis player to represent the United States of America at the Olympic Games, following his participation at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. (ITTF, 11 Apr 2016; SportsDeskOnline, 26 Feb 2020)