Table tennis doubles duo James Segrest and Gabriel Diaz de Leon are part of a massive community of international para table tennis athletes, all gathering at The Podium in Spokane this week.
“It’s amazing how all these disabilities come together,” Diaz de Leon said. “It’s very humbling at times as well, because you think you got all the training in and all that, and then you get here, and it’s like… It was…”
“Brutal,” Segrest said.
“It is brutal,” Diaz de Leon said.
Diaz de Leon has always been an athlete, but while serving in the U.S. Army, an ambush in Central America destroyed his vehicle. The crash heavily injured his spinal cord and paralyzed him, but he turned that into six paralympic medals, including gold for javelin in 1992 Barcelona.
“For me, this is the hardest sport I’ve ever tried, because not only do you worry about what you do, you have to worry about what your opponent is doing as well,” Diaz de Leon said. “So it’s amazing what these individuals can do with the ball. It’s only two ounces, and it’s very deceiving.”
His partner James shared with us how impactful it is to have a place in the United States like The Podium for athletes like them to play, unusual for a mostly international sport.
“We usually have to travel over to Europe or down to South America,” Segrest said. “It’s nice to be somewhere where we don’t have to learn a foreign language just to get along.”
“So a lot of times, if you really want to improve your game, you have to go and spend months at a time in Europe to try and compete with these athletes,” Diaz de Leon said. “So we’re way behind the 8-ball.”
The Texan pair together breezed past their Korea Republic opponents in the ITTF World Para Future round today and look forward to the rest of the tournament, still filling up tables tomorrow.
“We looked good against these guys, but we’ve had our fair share of ups and downs for sure,” Segrest said.
“To me, it’s just staying grounded,” Diaz de Leon said. “It’s almost like you do so many hours of training, at some point, you just put it on autopilot because it’s muscle memory. The body knows what it’s supposed to do.”
While the Future tournament wrapped up today, the ITTF World Para Elite tournament begins tomorrow and runs through next Tuesday.
COPYRIGHT 2025 BY KXLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
