GUERNSEY table tennis star Alice Loveridge came painfully close to qualifying for the 2010 Youth Olympic Games for the second week running.

The 15-year-old (pictured) has three qualification tournaments to make the Youth Olympics held in Singapore at the end of August.

The Sarnian, who is based at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield with the Great Britain senior development squad, played fantastically well to reach the semi-finals of the first qualification event in Bahrain over the first weekend of February.

Then last weekend at the second qualifying competition in Cairo, Loveridge bettered that and produced the best performance so far of her young career to make the final.

But Loveridge, who had been struggling with food poisoning, could not quite go all the way when she came up against the very strong Sofia Polcanova, of Moldova.

Victory would have assured her place in Singapore.

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