Europe Youth Top 10 U19 Girls: Unbeaten Hochart Sets the Pace as France Dominates

At Antibes, in southern France, the Europe Youth Top 10 table tennis event for U19 girls is entering its decisive phase. After two days of play, home player Leana Hochart has emerged as the leading candidate for the title, having yet to lose any match after six rounds. The most striking development came on the second day of play. Hochart did not merely win — she won outright, without conceding a single game. She beat Polakova (Czech Republic) 4-0 and then overcame Leal (Portugal) without dropping a game. Under the round-robin format, each match is played over seven games with the first to four games winning, so such straight-games victories point to a significant gap in level. It is worth stressing that the seven-game format reduces the likelihood of upsets compared with a five-game format. Hochart's unbeaten run is therefore a more reliable signal than a winning streak in a shorter format would be. On that basis, experts regard her as the strongest candidate for the top spot. Behind Hochart, the race for the following places remains tight. Alexia Nodin, another French player, and Bianca Mei-Rosu (Romania) each have only one defeat so far. However, the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) material offers two contradictory accounts of the head-to-head between these two players. One account says Nodin lost to Mei-Rosu on the opening day, while the other says Mei-Rosu lost to Nodin. In a round-robin format the two players meet only once, so at least one of the two accounts must be an error. This contradiction makes it impossible to determine the true ranking between Nodin and Mei-Rosu until the results are verified. The standings are a summary; the raw data is the testimony. And even official bulletins can contain errors, so readers should be cautious about hasty conclusions. Behind the leading group, the Polish players Bogdanowicz and Holda form a formidable second tier. Bogdanowicz has played solidly, while Holda has just taken a nerve-wracking seven-game win over Massart (Belgium). Matches like these often determine whether a tournament produces a clear champion or ends in a multi-way tie. When the stands are empty, I see the truest player. Another development has changed the picture: Itagaki (Germany) withdrew through injury. The organisers erased all results involving Itagaki. This is a fairness mechanism to prevent the withdrawn player's earlier results from affecting the scores of others. The consequence, however, is that every remaining player is scored against a non-uniform set of opponents, distorting the standings to some degree. Followers should treat mid-event standings as provisional and subject to change. In essence, this is an event about talent discovery and selection rather than the accumulation of international ranking points. It gathers around ten of Europe's leading U19 girls — the elite of the continent's youth pipeline — but it is not a global field. No players from China, Japan or South Korea are present. The presence of two French players in title contention shows the depth of the host nation's youth cohort. With Hochart still to play three matches on the final day, experts are asking whether she can complete a perfect unbeaten run, or whether she will be stopped by her own compatriots and other European rivals. In youth table tennis, the gap between a straight-games win and a surprise defeat can sometimes come down to a few points in the deciding games. And as a rule proven across many seasons, the numbers do not lie, but the people who read them do.