[Goodbye, Timo. We Won't Forget You] “I’m looking for it now, the second chapter of my life”

“When I’m at the venue, I focus 100% on the table tennis match. But once I’m away from there, I don’t think about table tennis.”

A great table tennis player is about to leave the court. Timo Boll, the once-in-a-generation superstar born in Germany. Since 2000, he has raced brilliantly through the world of table tennis, establishing a one-of-a-kind playing style. The Paris Olympics in the summer of 2024 will be his final international event, and he will put down his racket in the Bundesliga, which ends in spring 2025. Looking back on his table tennis career, what will Timo Boll have to say?

This interview was recorded in December 2025.

Published in the February 2025 issue of O-KOKU　Part 2

Goodbye, Timo. We Won’t Forget You

Without the Bundesliga, I wouldn’t be who I am now, and I wouldn’t have achieved what I did

● What did the Bundesliga in Germany mean to you? You joined the league when you first started playing table tennis, and worked your way up through the third division, second division, and first division.

Boll　When I was 16, my goal was to “become a good Bundesliga player.” That’s a pretty average goal, isn’t it? And I was thinking, “Maybe I’ll quit table tennis around 29.” I never thought I’d play this long.

　Without the Bundesliga, I wouldn’t be who I am now, and I wouldn’t have achieved what I did. Since I was a child, playing matches in the league was very important. We’d play one or two matches on the weekend, and train hard between matches. That was the established routine. There weren’t that many matches, but the cycle of playing on Saturday or Sunday, getting good training in between matches, and then heading into the next weekend felt short.

　When I look at players now, I really feel they don’t have time to train. They go to WTT, come back and immediately play in the Bundesliga, play matches, train once or twice, and then head off to another tournament.

　They’re mostly just making adjustments for preparation, and I sometimes feel there’s too little training to get stronger. When I was a junior, for example, we’d do training like, “Your Backhand isn’t good, so let’s focus on Backhand practice for three weeks.” We could play one or two matches on the weekend and spend the rest of the time focusing on our own training, but now I think there are too many matches.

● What does it mean to be a professional?