According to Dimitrij Ovtcharov, European Championship tournaments have an invigorating effect on table tennis idol Timo Boll.
“It’s a bit like Rafael Nadal and Roland Garros,” compared the 33-year-old before the home European Championships in Munich in an interview with the newspapers of the Funke Group Boll’s European Championship results with the impressive track record of Spain’s tennis star the French Open: “The EM is simply Timo’s tournament.”
Major record winner Nadal won 14 of his 22 Grand Slam titles in Paris. Boll has eight European record wins and a total of 20 gold medals. Despite the 41-year-old’s problems with the long-term effects of a broken rib, Ovtcharov thinks an improvement is possible: “I definitely see him as one of the favourites. Because of his many successes at the tournament, he’s simply calmer than everyone else.”
Personally, service specialist Ovtcharov is going into the tournament with lowered expectations after two ankle surgeries. Despite the chance of his third European Championship title, he “doesn’t want to stress”.
After twelve years with the Russian top club Fakel Orenburg, financed by the gas giant Gazprom, the Ukraine-born ninth in the world rankings, financed by the gas giant Gazprom, are still concerned about the consequences of the war: “Their life’s work – table tennis in Orenburg – which they have been building up for 20 years, is half broken. It’s just a shame that the decision that a war was started affects so many people negatively.”
He also doesn’t feel that the portrayal of the consequences of the war is balanced enough: “On the one hand, people are being killed, it couldn’t get any worse. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect others and their lives.”
Accordingly, the national player is also critical of the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian players from the European Championship: “In the end, they too are part of the table tennis family. Some of them are very young people who are just starting their careers. Their purpose in life is being taken away from them.”