Timo Boll aims to put his London trauma behind him in Liverpool

September 28, 2012

Timo Boll

Courtesy of Butterfly.tt

Men's World Cup in Liverpool

Just two months after the Olympic Games in London yet another of the world´s most significant table tennis tournaments will be taking place in England. In Liverpool, the best players in the world will be gathering to crown this year´s winner of the Men´s World Cup at which an impressive sum of 150,000 dollars in prize money will be at stake. In the absence of “Super Butterfly” and defending champion Zhang Jike (China), Timo Boll, who will be heading a seven-man Butterfly team, hopes to be in the running when the winner´s check for 45,000 dollars is handed over. However, with Ma Long and Xu Xin the medal favorites will once again be Chinese. Both are currently ranked number two and number three respectively in the World Rankings behind Zhang Jike.

European Champion Timo Boll features twice on the prominent World Cup winners list, having won in 2002 (Jinan) and 2005 (Lüttich) and for him the tournament is so much more than just one of the most prestigious tournaments with attractive prize money or simply preparation for the European Championships which take place from the 17th to 21st October in Herning in Denmark. On the contrary, with convincing performances against Asia’s best players, Boll wants to seize the opportunity to forget the trauma from London, which resulted in his early elimination from the individual event at the Olympic Games at the hand of his Romanian Butterfly colleague Adrian Crisan, who will also be competing in Liverpool. Boll:” The two competitions are completely different and are in no way comparable with one another. Nevertheless, I would really like to show the English spectators in Liverpool that I can play much better than I did in the individual event in London. I am very optimistic that I will achieve that goal, just as I did a few days later in the team event in London. Nonetheless, the road to a third title will be a rocky one as the Chinese, with their contenders Ma Long and Xu Xin, will pose a really tough challenge. Furthermore, all the other competitors are very strong players and should by no means be underestimated.”

Boll will be taking up the challenge against the Chinese with six other “Butterflies”. Ma Long alongside Xu Xin, who will be making his World Cup debut, will be particularly motivated as neither of their names have featured to date in the prominent list of World Cup winners. Furthermore, Olympic bronze medalist Dimitrij Ovtcharov (Germany) is among the list of medal hopefuls, who will be hunted by Boll and Co. Not only do Butterfly´s hopes for a successful tournament rest on Timo Boll´s shoulders but also on those of Chuang Chih-Yuan (Chinese Taipei), who finished fourth at the Olympic Games, South Korea´s top stars Joo Se Hyuk and Oh Sang Eun as well as Denmark’s European Championships medal hopeful, Michael Maze. Hong Kong´s Jiang Tianyi as well as Adrian Crisan really only have an outside chance of success.

The tournament consists of two stages, starting out with four preliminary round groups, each comprising four players. The first and second placed competitors will qualify for the knock out stage, beginning with quarterfinals on Saturday. Prior to the preliminary round the Intercontinental Cup will be staged, in which the four representatives from Africa, Latin America, North America and Oceania will compete to determine the 16th competitor for the main round of the World Cup.

The competitors in Liverpool:
(Players sponsored by Butterfly are bold)

WR 3 XU Xin (CHN), Asian Representative
WR 7 BOLL Timo (GER), European Representative
WR 91 HENZELL William (AUS), Oceania Representative
WR 127 MONTEIRO Thiago (BRA), Latin American Representative
WR 159 SALEH Ahmed Ali (EGY), African Representative
WR 430 THERIAULT P.-Luc (CAN), North American Representative
WR 83 DRINKHALL Paul (ENG), Host Nation Representative
WR 21 MAZE Michael (DEN), ITTF Wildcard
WR 145 PITCHFORD Liam (ENG), ITTF Wildcard
WR 2 MA Long (CHN), World Ranking Place
WR 8 CHUANG Chih-Yuan (TPE), World Ranking Place
WR 9 OVTCHAROV Dmitrij (GER), World Ranking Place
WR 11 JOO Se Hyuk (KOR), World Ranking Place
WR 12 OH Sang Eun (KOR), World Ranking Place
WR 13 GAO Ning (SIN), World Ranking Place
WR 15 SAMSONOV Vladimir (BLR), World Ranking Place
WR 17 JIANG Tianyi (HKG), World Ranking Place
WR 22 CRISAN Adrian (ROU), World Ranking Place
24 FREITAS Marcos (POR), World Ranking Place
Reserves:
WR 26 CHEN Weixing (AUT)
WR 28 TANG Peng (HKG)