Timo Boll took his time out. The table tennis record European champion was 0:2 behind in sets in his quarter-final against Dang Qiu, and in this third round it looked threatening again for him, 1:4. “I was looking for solutions,” said the 41-year-old later, “but I couldn’t find any.” And his coach? Wasn’t any help either. Because it was a purely German duel, there was no coach on the gang. Pensive and silent, Boll stared into nothingness for a minute, then it went on.
The spectators in the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle tried to help with subtle rhythmic clapping on Saturday morning. Even though Boll is Boll, they didn’t want to take sides too much. It sounded completely different than on Friday evening, when the oval turned into a cauldron and the fans roared their athletes to victory. Then everything happened very quickly. Boll was eliminated after less than half an hour, and Qiu, the 25-year-old from Nürtingen, was in the semifinals. He thus secured his first European Championships individual medal, after beating the man who had become European champion eight times in the space of 20 years alone. And a few hours later, his path would continue.
Dima, Bine, Nina, Nana – the nicknames of the Germans did not usually present the Munich audience with too great an intellectual challenge to modify the chant “Auf geht’s, Timo, auf geht’s”, which has been tried and tested for decades – which helped most of the addressees enormously on the way to medals. Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Sabine Winter, Nina Mitttelham and Shan Xiaona were meant. For Dang Qiu, who doesn’t quite fit into the scheme phonetically, you’ll have to practice a little more. Because the man who wields the racket with the increasingly rare Asian penholder grip does not inadvertently scratch the top ten in the world (which he had even reached for a short time), he showed that in Munich and not only against Boll. But also there: Above all, the clarity of his victory was surprising, 11:7, 11:8, 11:6, 11:2.
There was criticism of the draw system, which led to internal German and Swedish championships
The fear of Boll’s comeback qualities, which the old champion had shown in the first round against the Pole Samuel Kulczycki, remained great, Qiu later admitted. But he is now a slightly different number than Kulczycki. He is at position 13 in the world. Someone who has nothing but table tennis on his mind all day, a “table tennis madman”, as Boll later said – to add with a grin that he used to be the exact opposite: “I’m at home and haven’t thought about table tennis at all anymore.” At 10:1 in the fourth set, Qiu had nine match points, he used the second – again with a forehand topspin, the direction of which Boll did not predict.
There was criticism of the draw mode, which since 2018 has no longer taken into account putting players from the same nation in different pots if possible, which is why Qiu met Boll next after the duel against his doubles partner Duda on Friday, while in another part of the Tableau held four strong Sweden national championships. The latter, at least, came in handy from the hosts’ perspective, with Mattias Falck graciously taking on the difficult job of knocking out top-seeded Truls Moregardh. The former World Cup runner-up defeated the current World Cup runner-up.
Ovtcharov conqueror Karlsson tragically loses his semi-final – his thumb gets stuck on the plate and he has to give up
Dimitrij Ovtcharov should then take care of Kristian Karlsson, the brother-in-law of his teammate Patrick Franziska, whom he knows very well from Düsseldorf, where the 31-year-old played for the record champions for years. And who has already won the doubles title with Falck in Munich. But that wasn’t easy at all – especially since Ovtcharov made a lot of slight forehand mistakes, the last one against himself on match point: He was eliminated 2:4. The Swede “played at the limit” while he himself had to pay tribute to his long break from competition. It was close in the previous lap – if the crowd hadn’t pushed him so frenetically, “I wouldn’t have made it,” Ovtcharov was certain. You’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to play with spectators. Karlsson later tragically lost the even semi-final to Slovenia’s Darko Jorgic, retiring after catching his thumb on the plate.
So a medal, neither for Boll nor for Ovtcharov, but for Dang Qiu. That was it for the German men, spoiled by success. National coach Jörg Roßkopf took it easy. The whole team just had “too many training failures,” he said. This was not the case for Qiu, and his success could ultimately outshine everything else.
The whole team had too many training failures, said national coach Roßkopf
Because he actually made it into the final on Sunday. He also showed an amazingly confident performance against Falck. He has become an amazingly complete player in the past year, who also has great qualities in passive play. Incidentally, in the course of this game, some fans decided that “Dang Qiu” also had two syllables – others knew about his nickname “Dangi”. Anyway, the chants came.
Nina Mittelham reached the women’s final. The 25-year-old had not yet coped with the conditions in the hall in doubles and mixed, the scenery seemed to inhibit her. But in the individual competition, she improved significantly and relegated her long-time Berlin teammate Shan Xiaona to bronze in the German-German semifinals.
An unfortunate defeat, but a nice story: Sabine Winter has achieved a great goal with her bronze medal in the individual.
(Photo: Marius Becker/dpa)
She almost met a teammate again in the final: namely Sabine Winter, the local hero who had one of the most beautiful stories of this European Championship to tell. Two years ago, when the organizers asked her to be an EM ambassador, Winter had just had an operation on her right shoulder. She had put her international career on hold, moved back home from the Düsseldorf performance center, rejoined her hometown club TSV Schwabhausen and got her high school diploma. It was highly uncertain whether that would ever happen again. But if, as the 29-year-old knew, she still had two goals: the German championship title in singles – and a European Championships singles medal. She achieved both within a few weeks. And even if she lost her exciting semi-final 10:12 in the seventh set against Sofia Polcanova, an Austrian friend, she was able to smile about bronze afterwards.
Then there were a few nice messages in the sold-out Rudi Sedlmayer Hall. From Boll, for example, that he will by no means stop, but is looking forward to the next training session with Dang Qiu. Von Winter that the days in Munich were “incredibly fun” and thanked her for this unique experience. And von Ovtcharov: “This event,” he assured, “is the best thing I’ve experienced in table tennis in many years.” He, the 2021 Olympic bronze medalist.