Tower Hamlets finished the 2009 London Youth Games with a flourish after claiming a final-day victory in the girls' table tennis tournament at Crystal Palace

By JONATHAN CLEGG

Tower Hamlets finished the 2009 London Youth Games with a flourish after claiming a final-day victory in the girls' table tennis tournament at Crystal Palace on Sunday.

The triumph by quartet Sally Hoang, Sayeeda Miah, Majada Yasmin and Chantal Wilson doubled the borough's number of total wins after Tower Hamlets took the boys' cricket title at Lord's in May.

But the outcome was unable to prevent Tower Hamlets from a disappointing overall finish of joint 22nd with Barking and Dagenham, a drop of six places on last year's 16th-place effort.

Despite failing to match their overall position from 12 months ago, there were some notable results for the borough in the 2009 competition, which saw all 33 London boroughs in action at the National Sports Centre for the finals and ran for five weeks with more than 25,000 young Londoners taking part in 34 different sports.

Morpeth School foursome Hoang, Miah, Yasmin and Wilson overcame Wandsworth in the final of the girls' table tennis to improve on last year's bronze medal position, while the borough claimed runners-up spot in the sailing event after narrowly losing out to champions Hillingdon.

The boys' table tennis team, who lifted the title last year, finished fifth on this occasion, a result matched by the female artistic gymnastics squad, while both boys' and girls' judo teams and the male hockey team achieved sixth-place finishes.

Tower Hamlets' male disability athletics team also finished sixth, with further top-10 positions achieved in girls' cricket, female disability athletics, boccia, kayak sprint, girls' volleyball and boys' basketball.