The German Table Tennis Association’s latest press release on the Olympic nomination attributes an “important function” to the national player Patrick Franziska from the Champions League winner 1. FC Saarbrücken: that of the “supplementary player”. This position can actually become important in Paris in the summer, but only if one of the nominated team members Dang Qiu, Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Timo Boll falls ill or sustains an injury. Then Franziska will play. If they all stay healthy, the 31-year-old will not make a single rally at the Olympics. He experienced this before in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
At that time it was manageable for the Odenwälder man because it was his first Olympic Games. This time, in his third Games and after being part of the silver team in Tokyo in 2021, it would be a huge disappointment. The hard-fought third place in the team behind the seeded Qiu and Ovtcharov went to 43-year-old Timo Boll. It will be his seventh Olympic Games.
Franziska had high hopes, after all, he recently defeated the Chinese legend Ma Long at a tournament in Singapore and Ovtcharov in the next round. On the Easter weekend he won the Champions League with Saarbrücken for the second time in a row, beating Ovtcharov again in the final tournament.
Franziskas Club Saarbrücken is surprised and disappointed by the non-nomination
Saarbrücken table tennis manager Nicolas Barrois told the SZ about Franziska’s replacement nomination: “Patrick’s performances have been very good recently, we had hoped that he would be one of the first three team members; the fact that this wasn’t the case came as a surprise to us; We are disappointed and also mentioned to the DTTB that we cannot understand the decision 100 percent.”
The decision was probably not easy for national coach Jörg Roßkopf. He had to choose from world number ten Dang Qiu, eleventh Dimitrij Ovtcharov, number 16 Patrick Franziska, number 27 Timo Boll and number 45 Benedikt Duda. Two players (Qiu and Ovtcharov) are allowed to compete in singles at the Olympics. Qiu also qualified in mixed doubles with Nina Mittelham. Three are allowed to play in the team, a fourth has to accept the unsatisfactory role of the supplementary player. A few weeks ago Boll said that at the age of 43 he would no longer want to take on this role as a substitute player.
Even before the nomination, Roßkopf had spoken of the “curse and blessing” of his five strong players. Afterwards he emphasized that this was his “most difficult nomination as a coach”. It was quite clear that he would nominate Qiu and Ovtcharov for the singles.
Roßkopf discussed and decided on the nomination together with sports director Richard Prause, assistant coach Lars Hielscher and national base coach Xiaoyong Zhu. The decision about the third team place between Boll and Franziska was therefore close. Boll is already 43, but he is still absolutely competitive – when he is fit. He won a tournament in Doha in January with final-round victories against South Korea’s Lee Sang Su, Taiwan’s Lin Yun-Ju and Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto. At the tournament in Singapore he defeated the Chinese Lin Shidong.
The SZ said Roßkopf: “It was a difficult decision between Timo and Patrick, in which in the end nuances made the difference in Timo’s favor. Both played very well at the tournaments this year and developed very positively. We thought about it for a long time and then decided to focus a little more on experience in Paris. We won’t know until after Paris whether it was the right decision. And even then you can’t say with certainty how things would have gone if Patrick had been number three. “
Dividing the starting places in singles, mixed and team among four players so that all four can play is not of primary importance for the association. “We can’t please everyone,” says Roßkopf, “we thought a lot about it and then decided, knowing full well that it would be very difficult for some players.” But they want to “field what we believe to be the best possible team and pairing and the best individual players” in all competitions.
Patrick Franziska wants to show the national coach in the next few weeks how good he is. The Bundesliga final for the championship is scheduled for June 30th in Frankfurt, probably between Saarbrücken and Borussia Düsseldorf (with Dang Qiu and Timo Boll). “We hope,” says Saarbrücken manager Barrois, “that Patrick can show that it may have been the wrong decision.”