KALTHAM Elyasi and Fairouz Helmi last night captured the doubles gold medal in the Bahrain Women’s Games Table Tennis Championship.

The national team members lifted the trophy after beating Nadeen Adel and Fajer Yousef 3-1 in the final.

Fourteen players, making up seven pairs, competed in a single knock-out division at the Bahrain Table Tennis Association premises in Riffa.

Kaltham and Fairouz started the tournament with a tough 3-2 victory over Fatma Al Jazzaf and Sara Waheed 3-2 in the quarter-finals.

In the semi-finals, Kaltham and Fairouz scored another 3-2 win against Fatma Al Haiki and Maryam Khamis, who defeated Noora Al Dossary and Amal Waheed 3-2 in the quarter-final played earlier yesterday.

As for Nadeen and Fajer, they beat Fatma Al Qasmi and Noor Abdulla 3-0 to reach the semi-finals, where they stunned favourites Maryam Al Qassmi and Yara Jaber 3-0 to set up the title clash.

Earlier yesterday, the second round of the singles took place as Maryam Al Qasmi, Fatma Al Jazzaf, Fatma Al Haiki and Kaltham Elyasi all moved into the semi-finals.

Following highly-competitive matches, four of six players progressed into the tournament’s final four, set to take place tonight.

Bahrain’s No. one and former GCC champion Maryam lived up to expectations as she won Group ‘A’ beating Noor and Fatma Al Jazzaf with identical scores of 3-0.

In the battle for the second semi-final ticket from this group, Noor went head to head with Fatma Al Jazzaf, who registered a hard-fought 3-2 win to go through as group runner-up.

In Group ‘B’, Kaltham, Fatma Al Haiki and Nadeen vied for the remaining two slots.

Fatma clinched first place with victories over Nadeen (3-1) and Kaltham (3-0), who also qualified after defeating Nadeen 3-1. The semi-finals will be played today at 5pm, to be followed by the final.

Meanwhile, 13 players will be in action today when the shooting tournament gets underway at the shooting range in Al Raffa, Sakhir.

There will be three different competitions during the four-day event, including skeet shooting, rifle and pistol.

Prominent shooter Azza Al Qasmi, who represented Bahrain at the 2012 London Olympics last summer, will lead the participants in today’s official training.

There are six other sporting competitions taking place on the occasion of the first-ever Bahrain Women’s Games, being organised by the Supreme Council for Women in co-operation with the Bahrain Olympic Committee.

The volleyball, bowling and basketball championships have already taken place, with Bahrain’s under-17 team winning the volleyball title, former GCC champion Noora Sultan taking the bowling gold medal while Muharraq were recently crowned champions of the basketball championship with a 90-71 in over bitter rivals Manama last Wednesday.

The remaining three events are five-a-side futsal, athletics and disabled sports, all to take place later this month.