Bye, Timo - (Part 6 with Danny Heister): “Timo's sense of team spirit is a factor in many titles”

Germany's top star Timo Boll has been on his announced farewell tour of the German Table Tennis League (TTBL) with Borussia Düsseldorf since the start of the season. Here, important companions regularly share their thoughts and memories of the most successful player in Bundesliga history and his incomparable career. In the sixth part of our series “Bye, Timo”, Danny Heister, who first celebrated success with Boll as a teammate at TTV Gönnern and later as a coach at Borussia Düsseldorf, looks back on their time together.

“I am certainly one of the few people with whom Timo has spent most of his great career in a real working relationship. We got to know each other in 1996 when I moved to his club TTV Gönnern. After seven years, I went ahead to Borussia Düsseldorf as a player, so to speak, but when Timo also moved to Düsseldorf in 2007, I had just returned to my Dutch homeland. However, since I took over as coach at Borussia in 2010, we have been mutual companions again - until today. To sum up, I can say right at the beginning that I was able to witness Timo's journey from a 15-year-old boy to the number one player in the world and later his development into a real idol with an extraordinary personality at close quarters. Somehow I was always there.

The time we spent together was always a lot of fun. I also got to know Timo better and better as a person. He is a very respectful person, but above all he is incredibly down-to-earth. Even when he was still very young, I noticed that he didn't get carried away even after a really big win and that he hardly let himself be dragged down by a defeat. He was always very impressive mentally and quickly put everything into perspective.

In Gönnern, actually Höchst, I acted as a kind of liaison between Timo and my even older teammates such as Xu Zengcai or Slobodan Grujic or our coach at the time, Helmut Hampl, because of my ambitions to become a coach later on, with a ten-year age difference. I always liked to get a bit testy, whether in training or in our free time. There was a lot of banter, but sometimes there was also a bit of a row, which may have been helped by the fact that I'm known for not being able to stop making jokes once I've started.

Timo cultivates his relationship with the fans

I always challenged him in training by never giving up a point and always blocking. I've already said a few times that Timo was almost in tears on the floor because of me and called for Helmut Hampl because I was supposedly so mean to him at the table.

His friendliness has always been obvious to everyone. For example, right from the start, even as a schoolboy in his first year in Gönnern, Timo gave his autograph to anyone who wanted one - and he still does that today and probably won't change. There really are players who deal with fewer fans in a completely different way and just want to have their peace and quiet quickly. But Timo's fans are very important to him, that's why he cultivates his relationship with them, that's why he's playing almost all the games this year, because he doesn't want to disappoint the fans. He also knows my wife and our children, and they all say that Timo is an incredibly nice person.

During our time in Gönnern, he also met his current wife Deli. I wouldn't say that I directly set the two of them up with each other, but in my recollection, in my much crazier way back then, I did help to establish contact between Deli and Timo, despite his somewhat shy and introverted nature.

It was also funny during this time that Helmut Hampl and I always had a coffee after training and Timo always grumbled in disgust that it stank so much - and today Timo himself is a passionate barista and coffee connoisseur.

In terms of sport, apart from pure table tennis itself, it has always been important to Timo that the team is on the right track. He has always done a lot for this himself and has always fought for these teams, he has always taken on and borne responsibility - even though we have won titles without him scoring a point. Timo's appreciation and sense for a functioning team and team spirit is certainly also an important factor in the fact that we have won so many titles with Borussia. He's a good guy, someone who doesn't like stress, so we made sure that there was always as little stress as possible around him.

Mental strength and an incredible amount of intuition

Another characteristic of Timo is that he always wants to get the best out of himself. Even in training, when he was older and didn't train as much, he always played every point to the end and never let a ball through. He is always fully focused, and the other players could learn a lot from that. A career like Timo's doesn't just come about through talent and a knack for the game, unless you're also prepared to struggle and deal with disappointment. One of his outstanding achievements over the years has been his ability to adapt to new conditions, such as the new counting method up to the eleventh point, the 40 mm ball and the ban on sticking.

One of his most important qualities is his mental strength, he has never really gone down under pressure - also because he is really good at playing from point to point. This is also helped by his regular refocusing when he looks into the distance, which is already a ritual, when he visualizes as a planner. But he has always been able to get a lot more out of himself, including perceiving his competition environment with all his senses instead of the often-observed pumping up of his ears with loud music, for example.

As a player, he reflects his personality as an introverted person and planner. As a coach, I've also delved deeper into this personality, which has led to interesting insights, such as the fact that he plays with an incredible amount of intuition, needs his processes and can then also play in a very structured way. For a coach like me, it is also very important and nice that he has always tried to use and try out every tip in some way. There are also enough players at his level who believe they no longer need to do that. That's what made working with Timo so enjoyable over the years up until the last few weeks.

Proud of the years together

When Timo retires soon, we will miss a lot. He is a great figure for our club, for table tennis as a whole, and will therefore leave a corresponding gap. His farewell will be very emotional for everyone who was close to him.

However, I particularly remember one particular conversation. Four or five years ago, Timo hadn't been able to find a training partner, which is why I went to Höchst for a few days to train. As we sat together in the sauna after one evening, we let our thoughts wander a little and Timo suddenly said that neither of us would have thought in 1996 how everything had taken its course. That was nice.

Many of his teammates say these days that they are proud of the times they spent together with Timo. I'm also proud of those years with him and glad to have experienced this fine person so closely.”

*Danny Heister and Timo Boll share several successes as teammates at TTV Gönnern from 1996 to 2003 and as coach-players at Borussia Düsseldorf since 2010. Both won the DTTB Cup with Gönnern in 1998 and 2002 and also reached the Bundesliga finals for the German team championship in 2001 and 2002. During their time together in Düsseldorf, they have won 24 titles or three Champions League victories, one ETTU Cup victory, eleven German team championships and nine cup victories.

Recorded by Florian Manzke