At the Table Tennis World Championships in South Korea
Theft in Germany leaves Ovtcharov no peace
February 20, 2024, 9:42 a.m
The German table tennis men are still missing one victory to qualify for the Olympics. But Dimitrij Ovtcharov’s team is aiming for bigger things at the World Cup in South Korea. The former world number one is still preoccupied with his train ride to the airport before leaving for Germany.
Dimitrij Ovtcharov hasn’t lost his sense of humor yet. “With so much bad luck,” said the German table tennis star at the World Team Championships in South Korea, “we can actually only become world champions. Or Olympic champions.” Or both. By so much bad luck, the former number one in the world rankings meant the consequences of a turbulent World Cup preparation that even he, at the age of 35, had never experienced. Ovtcharov had his table tennis rackets, money, laptop and passport stolen on the train on the way to the airport.
But while he was at least able to travel to Busan a day late, his friend and teammate Timo Boll stayed at home. The most famous German player suffered an infection in his eye in the middle of his peak form.
The German team at the World Cup: national coach Jörg Roøkopf (from left), Benedikt Duda, Dang Qiu, Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Patrick Franziska and head coach Lars Hielscher.
(Photo: IMAGO/MaJo)
Looking purely from the results, the German team has coped well in this tournament so far. The reigning World Cup, European Championship and Olympic runners-up won all four preliminary round games and are now looking forward to reaching the World Cup quarter-finals and thus qualifying for the World Cup quarter-finals on Wednesday with a win in the first knockout round game team competition at the Olympic Games in Paris.
But Ovtcharov also said very clearly in Busan that he was “still very concerned with the situation that happened to me before the tournament.” It is difficult for a non-professional athlete to imagine what it means for a world-class table tennis player to have to change rackets two days before an important tournament. It’s perhaps comparable to a soccer player whose shoes don’t fit properly: it’s still possible to shoot at goal. But feeling and trust are gone for now.
Eight final defeats against China since 2000
Since the start of the World Cup, he has been constantly grinding the handle of his replacement racket “so that it feels the way it should again,” said Ovtcharov. “You have a special relationship with your wood. That also has a lot to do with trust.” In the 3-2 win against Kazakhstan, for example, he lost to Bundesliga professional Kirill Gerassimenko from Werder Bremen and said afterwards: “I quickly became very negative in my head. If you don’t hit two balls, then a bit of mental cinema goes on and you start playing even worse.”
Nevertheless, Ovtcharov’s World Cup record so far is very good with four wins in five matches. In addition, even without the record European champion Boll, the German World Cup team still consists of the individual European champion Dang Qiu (Borussia Düsseldorf), the former team European champions Patrick Franziska (1. FC Saarbrücken) and Benedikt Duda (TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt) as well the Olympic bronze medalist Ovtcharov. “With a team that has won so many titles and played for so many medals and big goals, it is clear that we want to win a medal at this World Cup,” said national coach Jörg Roßkopf.
The only question is whether that is enough to overcome one of the biggest challenges that exists in world sport: beating the table tennis supremacy of China. The Germans have lost six World Cup and two Olympic finals against this opponent since 2000 alone. And the five players that the Chinese have on their team at this World Cup are ranked one to five in the world rankings. In order to defeat them, everything has to be right. Not like in 2018, when Ovtcharov was injured. Or in 2022, when he, Franziska and Boll were all missing at once. Seen in this way, the 2024 World Cup is already back in the tradition of previous tournaments.
But Ovtcharov also said: “The Chinese have an amazing team. It won’t get any easier. But of course we dream of making it one day. I’ve lived with this belief for years. And if we should be in the final again, then “We’re going to work our asses off. Then we won’t say: It’s great that we’re in the final.”