Australian table tennis player
Simon Gerada (born 20 March 1981) is a right-handed Australian/Maltese Table Tennis Player. His father, Joe Gerada was born in Malta and emigrated to Australia in the 1980s. Simon Gerada was born and brought up in Melbourne, Australia and began playing at the age of 9 after he witnessed his father win a shopping centre tournament. He represented Victoria in national junior tournaments. He also competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics.[1]
2001 Commonwealth and World Table Tennis Championships Controversy
In January 2001, Gerada returned to Australia. On the same day, he got a phone call asking him to go to a training session. The Australian Team was training for the World Championships and it was in Gerada's Table Tennis Australia contract that he must attend this session. However, after 2 hours he walked out citing that he "could not cope". This compromised his Commonwealth Games position and despite calls from the Victorian Institute of Sport that he should be allowed to represent Australia, the authorities did not back down. Gerada accepted the offer from his father to play for Malta instead.
In response to this Simon said "I'd been playing the sport for six years professionally, hard at it. And where had (Australia) been for the past five years, when were (they) feeding me? I was eating toast before my last league match because I was struggling with money," he said. "But at the age of 19 I came home and said I need a break … and they weren't there for me, the officials."
In Melbourne in 2006, he teamed up with his elder brother Wayne [1] representing Malta in the Table tennis doubles.
In 2010, he returned to representing Australia in New Delhi, where, among the four categories he enlisted in, he teamed up with Justin Han in the men's doubles and pushed Sharath Kamal and Subhajit Saha of India before losing in full five games at the round of 16.
Malta
