Olympic Games: More medal glory for TTBL than ever before
The German Table Tennis League (TTBL) is spreading more Olympic medal glory than ever before in the coming season. A whole quartet of players from clubs in Germany's top flight returned from the Summer Games in Paris with precious metal for three podium finishes in two competitions.
The new Champions League joker Truls Möregardh from runner-up 1. FC Saarbrücken TT proved to be the most eager medal hamster with silver both individually and with the team. The reinvigorated "Tre Kronors" team also included Anton Källberg from title winners Borussia Düsseldorf and returnee Kristian Karlsson from promoted TTC OE Bad Homburg. Simon Gauzy from TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen was delighted to win bronze with hosts France.
Under "normal" table tennis circumstances, Gauzy's club colleagues Hugo Calderano (Brazil) and Shunsuke Togami (Japan) would also have been on the list of medal winners. However, as the Olympic competitions, unlike the World Championships or European Championships, were played for third place and Calderano in the singles and Togami with Nippon's team lost out in the bronze medal matches, the TTF duo were left with a thankless fourth place.
The results of the Olympic tournaments also brought a novelty: for the first time in TTBL history and also for the first time in 20 years, the highest German league can adorn itself with Olympic plaques without any domestic national players having been involved in the medals. In the singles, veteran Dimitrij Ovtcharov (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell) as the best player of the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB) clearly missed his self-imposed medal target due to his round of 16 exit, while the German men's team failed to reach the medal round for the first time in the last international tournament of idol Timo Boll (Düsseldorf) in the quarter-finals against Sweden, after four podium places at the Olympic Games in a row. Boll's subsequent farewell turned out to be one of the most emotional moments of the entire "summer fairytale" in France's metropolis.
But even without the German trio, aces from TTBL clubs left their mark on the Olympic competitions in the "Paris Arena Sud 4" - outshone only by France's "wunderkind" and new superstar Felix Lebrun. First and foremost Möregardh: The former World Championship silver medallist, who caused one of the biggest sensations in the 36-year history of table tennis with his second-round victory over China's world number one Wang Chuqin, confirmed his coup in the final against the new Olympic champion Fan Zhendong and was once again an important factor in Sweden's run to the final in the team competition.
However, Källberg delivered the big moments on the Scandinavians' path to the final. First of all, the 26-year-old sealed the end of Germany's medal hopes with his victory over Boll in the quarter-finals and thus also the end of his Düsseldorf club-mate's career at international level. In his team's subsequent 3-2 win over Japan in the semi-finals, Källberg turned the tide from an almost hopeless 2-0 deficit in the deciding match against Tomokazu Harimoto. Former doubles world champion Kristian Karlsson had brought the Swedes back into the match by winning the third game.
However, it wasn't just the German men's team that missed out on a place in the medal rounds in Paris. In the same competition, Brazil with Calderano and Guilherme Teodoro (ASC Grünwettersbach) and Taiwan with Kao Chen-Jui (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell) also missed out in the round of the best eight. Dang Qiu (with Nina Mittelham) and Ovidiu Ionescu (Post SV Mühlhausen) in the Romanian duo with Bernadette Szöcs and Karlsson with Källberg's sister Christina were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the mixed.
In total, all twelve clubs from the upcoming TTBL season were represented in Paris. Eighteen players from TTBL clubs competed in the singles, while the participation of four other professionals in the mixed and/or team events increased the total number of Olympic starters from the German elite league clubs to 22 players.
The performance of the professionals from the TTBL clubs in the three Olympic competitions at a glance:
Singles:
Silver:
Truls Möregardh (Saarbrücken)
Semi-finals (4th place):
Hugo Calderano (Ochsenhausen)
Round of 16:
Kirill Gerassimenko (Bremen), Kanak Jha (Bergneustadt), Darko Jorgic (Saarbrücken), Kao Chen-Jui (Fulda), Anders Lind (Dortmund), Dimitrij Ovtcharov (Fulda-Maberzell), Shunsuke Togami (Ochsenhausen)
Round 2:
Eduard Ionescu (Saarbrücken), Anton Källberg (Düsseldorf), Dang Qiu (Düsseldorf)
Round 1:
Martin Allegro (Bad Königshofen), Tiago Apolonia (Grünwettersbach), Daniel Habesohn (Mühlhausen), Ovidiu Ionescu (Mühlhausen), Luka Mladenovic (Grenzau), Cedric Nuytinck (Dortmund)
Mixed:
Quarterfinals:
Ovidiu Ionescu (Mühlhausen/mit Bernadette Szöcs), Kristian Karlsson (Bad Homburg/mit Christina Källberg)
Round of 16:
Dang Qiu (Düsseldorf/mit Nina Mittelham)
Team:
Silver:
Anton Källberg (Düsseldorf), Kristian Karlsson (Bad Homburg), Truls Möregardh (Saarbrücken)
Bronze:
Simon Gauzy (Ochsenhausen)
Semi-finals (4th place):
Shunsuke Togami (Ochsenhausen)
Quarterfinals:
Timo Boll (Düsseldorf), Dmitrij Ovtcharov (Fulda-Maberzell), Dang Qiu (Düsseldorf)
Hugo Calderano (Ochsenhausen), Guilherme Teodoro (Grünwettersbach)
Kao Chen-Jui (Fulda-Maberzell)
Round of 16:
Tiago Apolonia (Grünwettersbach)
Darko Jorgic (Saarbrücken)
Anders Lind (Dortmund)
Florian Manzke
Featured image above: Truls Möregardh, Kristian Karlsson, Anton Källberg f.l.t.r. (Photo: ITTF World)
Featured images in the text:
Simon Gauzy (Photo: ITTF World)
Timo Boll (Photo: BeLa Sportfoto)
Kristian Karlsson und Anton Källberg (Photo: ITTF World)