N a, have you seen “Marty Supreme”? No, me neither official start date It’s only February 26th, and I missed all the previews with all the bells and whistles surrounding it – a new world record was to be set in Berlin. If you haven’t noticed yet: “Marty Supreme” is a Hollywood film in which table tennis plays a very crucial role. The eponymous main character is based on the legendary US champion Marty Reisman, who won bronze five times at world championships, including once in the individual, in 1949 in Stockholm. However, he never became world champion.
Now you might ask: What, a movie about a guy with a table tennis bat who never became a world champion? Wasn’t there already “Forrest Gump” and didn’t he also manage to beat the Chinese? What you have to know is that Reisman played in the pre-Chinese era, when world champions still came from the Czech Republic or Hungary, from England or Japan. The first Chinese to win the titlewas a man named Jung, that was in Dortmund in 1959.
Now you have to ask when was the last time someone who didn’t come from China became world champion. For men it was Werner Schlager, in Paris in 2003. For women, it was even longer ago. Funnily enough, there was someone named Jung, albeit a Korean woman, in Gothenburg in 1993. The last European woman: Angelica Rozeanu, in Utrecht in 1955.
There are rumors in the scene that Chinese dominance is gradually crumbling. And the signs are actually increasing: the former world number one, still number 2, Lin Shidong, is now regularly losing to good Europeans, most recently even to Dima Ovtcharov. Even among the women, one of the indomitables now and then stumbles, says Wang Manyu against the Germans Yin Hang in Doha.
Hydra China
On the other hand: World champion Wang Chuqin is largely keeping a low profile, and when he shows up somewhere, he wins. Unless it goes against predecessor Fan Zhendong, who is earning his pension in the German Bundesliga at the age of 29. In general: Anyone who gets older in China and still wants to play internationally has to come up with something. The former world number one Zhu Yuling now starts for Macao, others play for Hong Kong or are expatriated completely; But that doesn’t happen that often anymore.
And so the model country of ping pong always conjures up new top players. Wen Ruibo, for example, who won the final against Patrick Franziska after defending a match point in Muscat, Oman, on Saturday. Must be pretty frustrating: people keep showing up in those scary red jerseys, if you beat one, another comes along. Keyword Hydra.
Maybe you have to get out of the box, think outside the box, as they say these days. Double match days in the Bundesliga, cross-gender competitions (long standard in Austria in the lower classes) – and why not one Team Europe instead of 47 of them? There would always be someone new in strong blue. With star ring on the chest. Politically, that would be good timing anyway.
America is trying Hollywood – Timo Boll, by the way, in a supporting role. Had to play with 50s thugs in the movie. We’ll write about bats, blades and slips next time.