Table tennis
“He’s a phenomenon”: Boll wins tournament with 42
Timo Boll won the WTT tournament in Doha. photo
© Tom Weller/dpa/archive image
He was injured for a long time. In the world rankings he fell to 182nd place. But in his tournament victory in Qatar, Timo Boll once again beat world-class players who are about half his age.
At the age of 42, the German table tennis star Timo Boll is back among the world’s best – just a year after a long-term shoulder injury. The record European champion from Borussia Düsseldorf won a tournament in the new World Table Tennis (WTT) series in Qatar for the first time. His final opponent Tomokazu Harimoto (20) from Japan and the semi-final opponent Lin Yun-Ju (22) from Taiwan were the same age as Boll.
“I’m not interested in the world rankings and anything statistical right now. I’m very grateful to feel the feeling of winning the tournament again,” said the best-known German player. In his career he has already won 19 international tournaments on the former World Tour and was number one in the world rankings three times. But because of his forced break for months last year, he has currently fallen to 182nd place in this ranking.
For comparison: Harimoto and Lin, who are more than 20 years younger, have always been considered the strongest challengers to the overpowering Chinese in recent years. The Japanese Harimoto is nicknamed the “child prodigy” in table tennis. Taiwan’s top talent Lin won the first German WTT tournament in Frankfurt am Main in November.
German national coach Jörg Roßkopf then called the fact that Boll was still beating them even at this age “simply unbelievable. He is a phenomenon. Only the really great athletes can do something like that.” Boll also collected new arguments for Roßkopf to nominate him for the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer despite strong internal competitors like Dimitrij Ovtcharov. That is his biggest goal this year.