Bayley, Pickard lead Britain’s Para table tennis medal haul in Slovenia
Bayley and Pickard took the headlines in Slovenia as Britain left Lasko with five singles medals and a stronger signal of depth before the World Championships.
Will Bayley and Fliss Pickard delivered the sharpest statement in Britain’s para table tennis week in Slovenia, taking silver medals at the ITTF World Para Challenger Lasko while Rob Davies, Tom Matthews and 18-year-old Lowri Hurd added bronze to lift the team haul to five singles medals.
Bayley’s men’s class 7 run was built on recovery and control under pressure. He trailed Croatia’s Pavao Jozic 8-2 and 10-7 in the first set of his opening match before stealing it 14-12, then closed out a 3-0 win. He beat Korea Republic’s Hwang Inchun 3-0 to top his group, then handled Germany’s Bjoern Schnake 3-1 in the round of 16 and Ireland’s Patrick Vaughan 3-0 to reach the semifinal. There, he met China’s Yan Shuo, the man who beat him in the men’s class 7 final at Paris 2024, in a meeting that carried real weight even in a Challenger event.
Pickard’s silver in women’s class 6 carried similar significance. The 17 July 1994 birthday on her Paralympic profile underlines the experience she brought to Lasko, and her latest run added another major result to a résumé that already included a Paris 2024 medal. With Britain also collecting bronzes through Davies, Matthews and Hurd, the week was not just about two established names; it showed medals coming from across several classes.
That depth mattered because Lasko was no ordinary stop on the calendar. The ITTF classified the event, held from 5 to 9 May 2026 in Slovenia, as an Elite tournament, and Table Tennis England described it as the strongest event since the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. The field reflected that standard, with a large Chinese squad and, in the words of Table Tennis England, "most of the world’s leading players" present.
The timing was important too. Ranking points and seeding positions from Lasko feed directly into the road to the World Championships in Pattaya, Thailand, from 13 to 19 November 2026. The ITTF says that event will feature 165 male and 165 female athletes, the first time the championships have had complete gender equality. That makes every result between now and then more valuable, and Britain’s showing in Slovenia suggested the programme is building more than one medal threat.
British Para Table Tennis also pointed to promising performances from other players beyond the podium finishers, a sign that the medal count in Slovenia may have been only the latest snapshot of a squad moving in the right direction. Bayley and Pickard led the way, but the broader message from Lasko was depth, momentum and a team arriving at the season’s biggest targets with real force.
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