The table tennis month of January in review: Successes for TTBL pros on the international stage and VR tournament premiere
In the first few weeks of the 2024 Olympic year, fans of the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL) have been able to enjoy numerous highlights and successes of their favorites from the German elite class almost literally one after the other. Whether at the Liebherr Cup Final Four, at several WTT tournaments and the Europe Top 16 Cup, at the first official virtual reality competition in Europe or even in the league: TTBL stars usually attracted a lot of attention and sometimes even celebrated major triumphs.
The national kick-off to the new year was a dream start for table tennis fans on the first weekend in January. At the cup finals in the ratiopharm arena Ulm/Neu-Ulm, the four participating teams offered top sport and made the 5,000 spectators, who ensured that the record attendance set only last year was broken, click their tongues more than once. At the end of the lighthouse event, German champions Borussia Düsseldorf were crowned cup winners with a surprisingly clear 3:0 win over Champions League winners and runners-up 1. FC Saarbrücken TT. In the semi-final duels with previous Cup winners, Düsseldorf had prevailed 3:1 against ASV Grünwettersbach and Saarbrücken 3:2 against TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen.
The spectacular table tennis festival was also a magnet for a large audience in front of the screens and on a wide variety of end devices. A total of almost three million viewers took advantage of the coverage offered by exclusive TTBL media partner Dyn with all three tournament matches (semi-finals and final), in the public broadcasting channels (ARD Sportschau, SWR news formats, special Saarländischer Rundfunk broadcast) or on the special-interest channel Sport1 with a detailed summary of all three duels. The reach also increased through various social media channels.
The Liebherr Cup Final Four was embedded in three top-class WTT tournaments in Doha with strong performances by TTBL professionals. At the beginning of the year at the WTT Finals, Düsseldorf's European champion Dang Qiu surprisingly stormed into the semi-finals as the best Bundesliga player with victories over two Asian top 10 players, before the Penholder player became the best TTBL player again after his detour to the Cup tournament and his subsequent return trip to the Gulf at the Star Contender by making it into the round of the best eight.
In the following Contender, Timo Boll sensationally left his mark on the event as another Düsseldorf player: Three years after his last tournament victory at the 2021 European Championships in Warsaw, the 42-year-old landed an unparalleled coup by winning the title. At the end of January at the subsequent Star Contender in Goa, India, Ochsenhausen's Brazilian top 10 star Hugo Calderano also delivered top TTBL quality by reaching the final.
This also applied to Darko Jorgic from Saarbrücken. On the weekend of Boll's hussar strike in Doha, the Slovenian celebrated his third title triumph at the Europe Top 16 Cup in Montreux, Switzerland, becoming only the second player in the 50-year history of Europe's second most important tournament to achieve a hat-trick.
Regardless of the international tournaments, the battle to stay in the league made the headlines in the TTBL. The basement children 1. FSV Mainz 05 and TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell celebrated impressive surprise successes in duels with top-class title and play-off candidates. Mainz's victories against Saarbrücken (3:1) and Ochsenhausen (3:2) were countered by Fulda's successes against TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt (3:1) and defending champions Düsseldorf (3:1), meaning that it was not even possible to determine who would be relegated this year.
The course for the future was set in mid-January in Düsseldorf at the premiere of the European Virtual Table Tennis Challenge Finals. Victory in the tournament for the 16 best players on the continent, which also included a VR individual competition and a show match with two professionals, went to 19-year-old world number one Antonin Landreau from France. Düsseldorf's manager Andreas Preuß was clearly impressed by the "table tennis of a different kind" and announced the establishment of an independent VR department for Germany's most successful table tennis club.
Florian Manzke