sports

Ri Yong Bae, aged 69, won the age group men's doubles in the division of amateur players of the 2024 National Open Tennis Tournament.

The victory was not the first time for old Ri.

He had won first place in the 2019 and 2023 sports contests of persons with disabilities and amateurs and the 2023 spring sports games of old people.

After all, he has so far lifted four winner’s trophies, including this time.

Being called an amateur tennis player, he lives in Minhung-dong, Moranbong District, Pyongyang.

Whenever he looks at the trophies he won, he always feels youthful vigour, he says.

It was 15 years ago that he established relations with tennis.

He said he had learned table tennis in a school table tennis group in his childhood.

So he enjoyed playing table tennis at his workplace.

Then one day, his fellow workers advised and encouraged him to play tennis, saying it was something worth trying. So he tried, swinging tennis racket in his bewilderment. Unlike table tennis, the racket was big and long and the court wide and so he felt refreshed.

With it as an occasion, he struggled to practise tennis techniques at leisure hours and continued to do so even after he became a pensioner.

So he always played a leading role in various mass sports games held as the zeal for sports bubbled up all across the country and made a decisive contribution to winning victory in all doubles matches with his special skill as a powerful weapon.

“Ri Yong Bae always put the opponent on the defensive with back hand cut, his strong point. The ball he cut with back hand was so difficult to receive and give back that opponent players were very afraid of it,” said Kang Pyong Chan, an old man who partnered Ri to victory in the men's doubles of the age group division of amateur players of the 2024 National Open Tennis Tournament.

According to Ri, playing tennis helped him maintain rich emotions, stable psychology and a pleasant mind, and it always had a positive effect on various aspects of his work and life.

“I feel as if I am relieved of stress from my body whenever I swing tennis racket. After playing tennis, I always feel refreshed and have no regret about getting older,” he said.

Ri Yong Bae still maintains close relations with the people who worked together at the workplace, and receives affection and respect from neighbours as a model householder in the neighbourhood unit and from his wife, children and son-in-law in his family.