Alumni Koyo Iwabuchi (Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd., 2017 graduate of the School of Education) has been selected to represent Japan at the Tokyo 2020 Para Table Tennis Championships in the Men’s Class 9 event.
Iwabuchi ranked third in the world by the ITTF (International Table Tennis Federation) as of April 1, 2020, fulfilling the requirements for participation in the Paralympics based on the world ranking quota the federation has set.
Table tennis for the physically disabled is divided into wheelchair classes 1-5 and standing classes 6-10, depending on the degree of disability (the respective numbers increase as the degree of disability decreases). Iwabuchi was unofficially selected to participate in Men’s Class 9.
Profile
Koyo Iwabuchi
Born in Tokyo in 1994. Graduated from the School of Education, Waseda University. Due to a congenital functional disability in both lower limbs, he has a limited range of motion in his ankles and plays with a brace on his left foot. He began playing table tennis in his first year of junior high school. Iwabuchi has been participating in international para-table tennis tournaments since his third year of high school. Since then, he has won competitions in Japan and abroad. He competed in the Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games in 2016 while still a student at Waseda.
