World class table tennis is a spectacular combination of competitive sport and circus artistry. And sometimes it can bring tears to the eyes of the observer. For example, when Timo Boll, one of the most prominent racket acrobats from Odenwald, looks at his favorite player with a painful stomach muscle strain and hears his painful groan with individual blows – then the sport becomes a drama. Tears of compassion included.
Boll delivers the next big drama
Boll was finished when he won an individual medal at a world championship for the second time in his career with a 4-2 win against the American Kanak Jha in Houston. At 40 years and 264 days, he is even the oldest male medalist in a World Cup singles. But all of this had hung by a thread, or better: on damaged muscle fibers. “I didn’t know whether to quit,” Boll later reported of his ordeal: “But I didn’t want to have to blame myself.”
Hans-Wilhelm Gäb, the honorary president of the German Table Tennis Association, even ennobled Boll afterwards “finally to a legend”, as if there were still doubts about this status. The performance, said Gäb, was comparable to that of the show jumper Hans-Günter Winkler, who had suffered something similar 65 years ago.
Pain is part of competitive sport, many athletes strain their bodies beyond what is bearable. In the quarter-finals, Boll not only played against an opponent, but also against an injury. It was still uncertain on Sunday whether he would be able to play against Sweden’s Truls Möregardh in the semi-finals (on Monday night). But should he really forego the game, or should he not keep the – again painful – chance of his first individual final at a World Cup alive?
The two-slit bore features of a Greek legend. Boll was already a kind of legendary figure in his sport. His 21-year-old opponent in the quarter-final, Jha, played with a butterfly blade, model ‘Timo Boll’. His 19-year-old semi-final opponent Möregardh once named Boll as a role model in a questionnaire. The fact that the boys had the suffering legend in front of them should have impressed them despite all their professionalism.
All efforts have paid off: Timo Boll wins individual bronze medal in Houston for the second time. At 40 years and 264 days, he is even the oldest male medalist in this discipline.
(Photo: Imago)
Such a story is also known from Hans-Günter Winkler, the former show jumper who died three years ago. Winkler climbed the sport Olympus on June 17, 1956 at the Stockholm Games, when his mare Halla carried him flawlessly through the course to gold, while Winkler groaned with a muscle tear in his stomach with every jump. Those black and white TV images were very present when Boll’s lawsuit was heard over the weekend in Texas. “At some point I got so excited that the pain didn’t go away,” he reported, “but the adrenaline helped – and you got closer to victory.”
The fact that Boll also won the bronze medal with a victory should not have been detrimental to his ability to suffer. The bronze medal in the individual world championship had only been won once, in 2011 in Rotterdam. Without a damaged abdominal muscle, Boll in Houston could have dreamed of even greater consecrations. The Swede Möregardh is only number 77 in the world rankings, and in the final on Tuesday night there is a Chinese waiting – but one who could have been defeated in top form.
Two years ago, at the individual World Championships in Budapest, Boll had already experienced such a story. Even then he had no more Chinese to fear in his half of the tournament board on the way to the final. But before the round of 16 against South Korean Jang Woojin he got a fever and had to get out of the singles and doubles, in which he and Patrick Franziska could have secured bronze against two Portuguese. “His heart is bleeding,” said team doctor Antonius Kass at the time.
It was no different in Houston. But this time bronze at least quenched the emotional bloodletting a little. The national coach Jörg Roßkopf joked: “2011 the first individual World Cup medal, now the second – maybe he’ll get the third in 2031.”