Sri Lanka’s Taavi Samaraweera has won the Under-11 boys’ singles title at the WTT Youth Contender tournament in Lignano, Italy, beating an opponent from Hong Kong, China 3-0 in the final.

The tournament ran from 21 to 24 October, and the win is his fifth gold medal at World Youth Ranking tournaments in 2026, NewsFirst reported on Sunday evening.

The count matches this desk’s own record

Samaraweera’s 2026 gold medals in the age group were last tallied here on 1 September, when he took silver in Varazdin, Croatia. At that point he had four Under-11 golds this year — Qatar, Bahrain, Kosovo and Slovenia — along with three Under-13 podium finishes.

Those four plus Lignano make exactly the five NewsFirst reports, so the claim is consistent with independently reported results rather than resting on a single assertion.

Ranked second, having been first

NewsFirst places him at world No. 2 in the Under-11 category. That is a change worth recording: when he returned from a Kosovo and Norway tour in June, he was the world No. 1-ranked Under-11 player, a Grade 6 student at St. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia.

The ranking is a rolling points table across the WTT Youth Contender circuit rather than a single-event standing, so positions move as players accumulate results across events.

A note on the spelling

NewsFirst’s Sunday filing spells the player’s given name “Tavi”. Its own earlier reports, including the Croatia silver in September, use “Taavi”, which is also the form in this desk’s archive. The longer spelling is used here for consistency.

Not reported

The filing does not name the beaten finalist, give the game scores, say how many entries the Under-11 draw carried, or state whether Samaraweera also contested the Under-13 event at Lignano as he has at previous stops. It does not say what the result does to his ranking points, or what he contests next.

At the time of writing no other verified newsroom had filed on the Lignano result. Searches of verified outlets returned only his earlier medals and an earlier rise to world No. 1, which are separate events.