Table Tennis: Timo Boll’s Column  "Olympics in Beijing"

Issue No. 1, March 5, 2008

Hello, everyone, I am Timo Boll. I am glad to have regular communications with you through this column ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

I regret that due to injury I was not able to attend the Guangzhou World Championship tournament. Nevertheless I still cast my focus on it and kept close contact with my teammates and coaches. The German team had bad luck this time, apart from my injury absence, Steger and Suess were also sidelined in crucial matches due to certain injuries. So, the 7th place can be regarded as a kind of victory under such circumstances. I believe that genuine fans also understand that this doesn’t amount to the real strength of the German team. We will definitely play for better results in the Olympics should all key players are fit.

I heard that a lot of fans care for my fitness. Actually I had been troubled by the knee injury since the post-Christmas training and it takes certain period of time to recover and get fit as it occurred before to some other players. My teammate, Joerg Rosskopf, who also sustained such an injury before, suggested me a withdrawal from the World Championship. I am really grateful to the media and fans for their care and attention. I am now resuming the training and hopefully there won’t be any fitness problem before the Olympics so that I could present the athletic form that fans and my teammates have expected.

Regarding the Chinese team, I heard that Wang Liqing has been confirmed to play in the Olympic qualification tournament. Honestly, I never see Wang troubled by so-called crisis in the past months, even though Ma Long did make some impressive progress. I myself really like matches against Chinese players, which could help me improve, therefore, I reserve my personal opinion on the latest ITTF policy of limiting the number of citizenship-switching Chinese players.

On the other hand, of course, the rest associations need to focus more on youth training. The increase of competition in the international arena would eventually boost Chinese to further improve.  Now the ITTF is concerned about too many Chinese are playing on behalf of other associations, which nevertheless is a testament to the Chinese achievement in table tennis as China is able to supply the rest of the world with large quantity of talents.

(First issued: Titan Sports, March 5, 2008)