N N, have you already seen “Marty Supreme”? No, me neither; the official release date is still February 26, and all the premieres with all the frills around it – in Berlin there was supposed to be a new world tour record – I missed that too. For those who haven’t noticed yet: “Marty Supreme” is a Hollywood film in which table tennis plays a very decisive role. The titular main character is modeled after the legendary American champion Marty Reisman, who won bronze five times at World Championships, including once in singles, 1949 in Stockholm. World Champion, however, he never became.
Now one might ask: What, a film about a guy with a table tennis paddle who never became world champion? Wasn’t there already “Forrest Gump,” and didn’t he manage to beat the Chinese as well? It should be noted: Reisman played in the pre-Chinese era, when world champions still came from Czechoslovakia or Hungary, from England or Japan. The first Chinese to win the title was a man named Jung, that was 1959 in Dortmund.
Nowadays one has to ask more often: when was the last time someone who wasn’t from China became World Champion? In the men’s division, it was Werner Schlager, 2003 in Paris. In the women’s division, it’s even longer ago; amusingly, it was also someone named Jung, but a Korean woman, 1993 in Göteborg. The last European woman: Angelica Rozeanu, 1955 in Utrecht.
In the scene, people whisper that Chinese dominance is gradually crumbling. And indeed the signs are piling up: the former world number one, still number two, Lin Shidong, now regularly loses to good Europeans, most recently even against Dima Ovtcharov. Also among the women the unbeatable ones sometimes stumble, such as Wang Manyu against the German Yin Hang in Doha.
Hydra China
On the other hand: World Champion Wang Chuqin keeps largely to himself, and when he appears somewhere, he wins. It is against his predecessor Fan Zhendong, who at 29 years old is cashing in on his retirement in the German Bundesliga. In general: anyone getting older in China who still wants to play internationally has to come up with something. The former world number one Zhu Yuling now competes for Macao, others play for Hong Kong or renounce their citizenship; that is not happening nearly as often these days.
And so the model land of table tennis keeps conjuring up new top players from the hat. Wen Ruibo, for example, who on Saturday in Muscat, Oman, defeated Patrick Franziska in the final after saving a match point. It must be quite frustrating: again and again, people in those fearsome red jerseys appear; you beat one, another comes along. Keyword: Hydra.
Perhaps one must also think outside the box, as the saying goes nowadays. Double-match days in the Bundesliga, gender-spanning competitions (in Austria in the lower classes it has long been standard) – and why not a Team Europe instead of, uh, 47 of them? Then there would always be someone new in dark blue. With a star ring on the chest. Politically, it would also be good timing.
America is trying it with Hollywood – Timo Boll, by the way, in a supporting role. He had to play with 1950s-style paddles in the film. We’ll write about paddles, blades, and rubbers next time.
