Photo by Matthias Ernst
It´s Monday, the 9th of March. In the German Table Tennis Centre it's business as usual. Players from all around the world arrive in the centre to practice on a high level. Michael Maze is there and Dimitrij Ovtcharov, also Timo Boll and Tiago Apolonia and many more. But something is different today. Is it that there is also a group of Chinese players with their coach Liu Guozheng? Maybe that’s also something special, but the most exciting difference is that there are 12 wheelchair players.
They arrive from the centre from Germany, Suisse, Great Britain, Greece, Italy and Kuwait. There is an European Trainingscamp from the ETTU, but there is - at the same time - an international Tetra Trainingscamp organized by Holger Nikelis. The whole German Tetra Team is there to prepare for the European Championships. Holger Nikelis and Walter Kilger and also Bianca Neubig are practicing with Barbara Puhl (Germany, the only class 3 player in the camp), Thomas Hinkel (Germany), Silvio Keller (Suisse), Robert Davies, Dzaier Neil (both Great Britain), Elena Manzi (Italy), Nikolaos Kaplanis (Greece) and Hasan Bumajdad (Kuwait).
The coaches are the German National coaches Joachim Voigt, Charly Weber (who is also a wheelchair player in class 5, he won Gold at the Paralympics 1992 in the team event) and Hannes Doesseler. Head Coach Joachim explains the idea of the camp: "We use this international camp for our preparation. If we have national camps it´s always a problem to integrate the Tetra-players perfectly, now we have the best conditions with good partners. All the players can improve their game. The Centre in Düsseldorf offers the perfect conditions. We also have very good experience from our international trainingscamp here last year." Of course the Pros trained in another hall than the wheelchairs but at least one foto together was taken to show that the big table tennis family meets in Düsseldorf. Dzaier Neil from Great Britain was satisfied: "I will come back. It was a great opportunity and I learned a lot. I hope we will have this camps more often."
Joachim Voigt
Photo by Matthias Ernst