Timo Boll ends his career this weekend. Germany’s best table tennis player ever was a special star away from the record.
If you want to understand why Timo Boll is more than just Germany’s best table tennis player of all time, you have to go back on May 2006. Back then, in the World Cup round of the Chinese Liu Guozheng, the Odenwald had matchball. One more point, then the quarter-finals would have been reached, one of the heaviest opponents defeated and a big step to the desired World Cup title. What happens then is exceptional: a backhand from Guozheng is supposed to end up in the end. But Boll reacts immediately and signals that the ball was still on the plate.
“I would have won the game through this foray shot. The referee hadn’t seen it, but that would have felt damn bad for me,” Boll recalls in an HR documentary to say goodbye to the table tennis legend. “Then I lost the game. It hurt, I would have had a very good chance of going very far. But if. If. It was the right decision. And I don’t mourn it either.”
Documentary about Timo Boll
To say goodbye to Timo Boll, the HR shows a documentary. The film will be on Monday, June 16, from 9 p.m. on HR television and can also be seen in the ARD media library during the day.
A world career made in Odenwald
Boll is later honored with a fair play price for this honesty. Only one of many trophies that the table tennis professional, born on March 8, 1981 in Erbach in Odenwald in Hesse, won in his almost 30-year career. Four medals at Olympia (2x silver and 2x bronze in the team), 15 European Championship victories in the individual and team, plus eight World Cup medals, Champions League victories and much more decorate the resume of the 44-year-old today, who finally ends his career at the final tournament for the German championship this weekend.
He was number 1 in the world three times, the first time at the age of 22, the last time in 2018 at 37. Boll is the oldest world ranking of all time. Or as he expressed it himself: “I am the oldest, but certainly also the slowest No. 1 of all time.” It was this kind that Boll always got. In terms of sport, he stood on a level with the largest in Germany, the Nowitzkis, Schumacher or Ullrichs. But he always remained the humble boy from Höchst in the Odenwald.
Wohmobil instead of jet set
“I’m just a normal highest. I think the people here never realized it so that I am known in the sports world. They always treat me like a normal person and that’s a good thing,” says Boll. It never pulled him into the glamor world. “If I could somehow cancel a gala, I did it too. It’s nice to immerse yourself in such a world, but I quickly had to get out of it,” he explains in the HR documentary-and sits in his motorhome in Düsseldorf. While other professional athletes in his category like to vacation in yachts in front of Ibiza, Boll spends his free time in the camper.
The trigger was the fear of flying his wife Rodelia Jacobi, with whom he has been married since 2003 and who was always an enormous support for him. “We tested it once and it was our most beautiful vacation.” Since then: Camping instead of jet set – and this not only applies on vacation, but also for his normal life at his long -time Club Borussia Düsseldorf. “I have now rented my apartment in Düsseldorf and live right next to the hall in the motorhome.”
A crazy vision
Boll’s incredible career really started in 1989. At that time, the Hessian state coach Helmut Hampl discovered little Timo at the year championships in Wetzlar and promoted him. Since then, Boll’s career has been inextricably linked to Hampl. It was the coach that developed a vision for the super talent and has set completely new ways with the Höchst-Gönner model.
“If we want to achieve something with Timo, we can’t take him out of his parents’ house,” was the credo Hampls. And so he did not bring the then 15-year-old youngster to the Bundesliga team, but the team to Boll. The TTV Gönnern, Bundesliga Club from Marburg-Biedenkopf, was transplanted to Höchst 170 kilometers south. Boll lived at home and the team moved into the Odenwald. “At that moment I wasn’t so aware that it is such a special constellation,” says Boll today. “This is almost uncomfortable for me to speak that I was so ungrateful at the time.”
A world star in China
At that time, a mentor was brought with today’s national coach Jörg Roßkopf. “I was obliged to make it really hard to work extremely hard,” explains Rosskopf. In general, this feeling for the little ball, that was what Boll always turned out. “I always had a special talent to stroke the ball,” says Boll about his spectacular style of play, which earned him the name “Magic” in the professional circus.
This talent recognized Hampl and sat on him. It was Hampl’s vision – and Boll delivered. At the age of 17 he became a German champion, followed by the European Championship title, World Cup victory and then in 2003 the first jump to the top of the world rankings. He also defeated the stars from the motherland of table tennis, China, and thus became a celebrity in Asia. While Boll is unlikely to be considered on the Frankfurt Zeil, everyone in China knows him. “You can’t imagine what’s going on. In the end, he can’t walk across the street,” says Hampl.
Applause to say goodbye
It was never so extreme in Germany’s table tennis scene, but what role Boll played and played here for sport, you can see from the farewell tour that the superstar gives this year: every game sold out, always standing ovation and emotional speeches. The arena capacity had to be increased at short notice for the Bundesliga final in Frankfurt. The fans don’t want to miss Timo Boll’s farewell.
But despite all these successes, despite the many victories against China, the very big triumph, a single World Cup or Olympic victory was always denied. Braked by injuries, large competitors such as 2004 Altstar Jan-Ove Waldner or his own fairness, Boll was unable to win in the most important games of his career. “I felt more and more than I thought I would have thought and that is why it might have been the icing on the cake for many outsiders, but I’m happy about the many beautiful moments I had,” says Boll today.
And the manager of his long -time club Borussia Düsseldorf, Andreas Preuss, summarizes it in such a way that nothing can be added: “You can only do your best. Most of the time, sport remains imperfect. But he certainly won gold in his human being.”
