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In exalted company
By Ian Marshall
// International Table Tennis Federation
// August 19, 2005
Tahl Leibovitz gained third place when the United States Olympic Committee voted for the `July 2005 Athlete of the Month’. It was a remarkable achievement for the table tennis player from New York, especially when you consider the opposition.
In second place in the men’s category was swimmer Aaron Peirsol and the winner was none other than cycling’s living legend, Lance Armstrong!
Superstars
Aaron Peirsol from Irvine, California won three gold medals at the FINA World Championships; the hundred and two hundred metres backstroke plus he was a member of the successful four hundred metres medley relay team. Quite remarkably, he has won every international two hundred metres backstroke event he has entered since winning the silver medal at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong from Austin, Texas is a true sporting superstar. Ranked the number one cyclist in the world at the beginning of 1996, a member of the United States team at the Atlanta Olympics he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in October of that year. Given only a fifty percent chance of recovery, he defied the odds and in 2005 won an unprecedented seventh Tour de France; the competition that attracts the largest number of spectators of any sporting event in the world.
Dominant
The accomplishments of Lance Armstrong and Aaron Peirsol underline the achievement of Tahl Leibovitz in gaining third place. Leibovitz dominated the table tennis events at the Para Pan Am Championships held in Mar del Plata, Argentina 16-23 July 2005.
He won the Class Nine Singles without the loss of a single game, partnered Mitchell Seidenfeld to gold in the Men’s Class Ten Team event and in the Open Standing Class overcame his partner to clinch yet another title. It was the second time that that he had won three gold medals at the Para Pan Am Championships and in 2005 was deservedly named as the most outstanding standing disabled player of the Americas.
A fine achievement and as a result of his efforts, alongside colleagues Mitchell Seidenfeld, Norman Bass and Ed Levy, he has qualified for the World Championships for the Disabled to be held in Montreux, Switzerland in September 2006.
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