Young table tennis player Riva Rakotoarisoa has joined the Stade Clermontois club. He aims to qualify for the Olympic Games in the future.
International career. The Stade Clermontois table tennis club officially announced on Sunday the arrival of the 19-year-old young player, a multiple champion of Madagascar, Mamy Riva Rakotoarisoa. “I am primarily in Clermont-Ferrand to pursue my university studies in Sports Science (STAPS). I contacted the Stade Clermontois club, and they accepted me,” explained the national team regular. “My goal is to obtain my university degree. In terms of table tennis, I am trying to broaden my high-level experience with the aim of eventually qualifying for the Olympic Games,” said one of the best current table tennis players on the Great Island.
Stade Clermontois competes mainly at the national and regional levels, with a men’s team in Nationale 2. The club regularly distinguishes itself in departmental and federal team competitions.
Riva was recently a member of the national team at the World Team Championships in London in early May. Ranked as the second-best table tennis player in the country and a gold medalist at the 2025 East African Championships, he also competed in the African Youth Championships in Lagos, Nigeria, that same year.
In 2024, he won the gold medal at the ANOCA Youth Games in the Seychelles and represented the country at the African Games in Accra, Ghana. Riva won the gold medal at the Indian Ocean Island Games after securing the national senior elite title. Previously, he swept the national cadet titles in 2021 and junior titles for three seasons (2023, 2024, 2025).
The youngest in a family of high-level athletes, Rakotoarisoa is following in the footsteps of his parents and older brother. His father, Tahiry Rakotoarisoa, was also a multiple champion of Madagascar and served as the National Technical Director of the Madagascar Table Tennis Federation for a decade before moving abroad more than two years ago. He currently plays for the Lagarde-Albussac Midi Corrézien club. His older brother, Mamy Setra, a triple champion of Madagascar in 2018, 2019, and 2021, has been playing for the Pays Rochois et Genevois Tennis de Table 74 in Nationale 1 since 2022. Their mother, a former president of the Analamanga league, is better known as a handball player for one of the most titled clubs in the country, THBC, a multiple national and regional champion.
Captured & Published at: 2026-09-22 05:38:50 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/09/tennis-de-table-mamy-riva-rakotoarisoa.html