Sabine Winter from Bad Soden is moving further and further into the table tennis elite. The best European woman is now even in the top 10 in the world. The crucial reason: their special style of play.
National table tennis player Sabine Winter’s winning streak at the World Cup in Macau came to an end in the semi-finals last weekend. The 33-year-old from Bad Soden am Taunus (Main-Taunus district) lost 4-0 to world number one Sun Yingsha. After Winter became the first European in eleven years to reach the round of the top four at the prestigious tournament, she had no chance against the world champion from China.
Nevertheless, the native of Hesse celebrated: “Bronze at the World Cup is the greatest success of my career.” She added in disbelief: “It’s completely crazy that I can fly home with a bronze medal.” Only Winter’s long-time teammate Petrissa Solja had previously made it to the semi-finals from Germany in 2015.
Winter moves into the top 10
Winter’s reward: Since this Monday she has belonged to an elite circle in the world rankings. “It seems as if I will actually be in the top 10. I can only repeat myself: That’s actually completely crazy. I didn’t think that was possible myself,” said Winter at the weekend. A look at the table updated at the beginning of the week confirmed the 33-year-old, who is now in ninth place.
In the quarterfinals, Winter clearly beat the Chinese team world champion Wang Yidi and once again proved that she can shake up the world’s best. With its anti-topspin rubber on the backhand Winter drives the top players to despair. She basically lets the opponents’ topspin run into nothing, neutralizes it, and the smooth surface reverses the rotation. When a shot with a lot of backspin rushes toward Winter, a lot of topspin comes back – and vice versa.
In the end she gets “a good slap”
Only Sun was too strong, although Winter had hoped to be able to annoy the defending champions “with my style of play”. In the end she had to admit: “I just received a good slap. I would have liked to have resisted a little more, but Sun Yingsha tore me apart.”
Most recently, she had already reached the semi-finals of the highly prized Singapore Smash, where she was only defeated by Wang Manyu (China), second in the world rankings. Winter was the first European to reach the semi-finals of one of the top tournaments in the WTT series. In Macau, she continued her success seamlessly.
