On April 2, 2016, Afanador made history becoming the first Puerto Rican male table tennis player to qualify for the Olympic Games. On June 3, 2016, Afanador upset number 10 seeded and number 44 in the International Table Tennis Federation world ranking Bojan Tokič at the 2016 ITTF Slovenia Open in Otočec, Slovenia. He competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics where he defeated Suraju Saka 4–3 in the preliminary round before losing to Omar Assar 4–2 in the second round.