Conclusion of the European Championships in Linz: With Kaufmann comes change in German table tennis sport

When the spectators were enthusiastic about the table tennis player Benedikt Duda, they shouted “Dudadudaduda” from the stands. In the Linz Arena at the weekend you could have had the feeling that an emergency vehicle was approaching every time – only there were no blue lights to be seen.

The Gummersbacher Duda from the Oberberg Bundesliga club Schwalbe Bergneustadt was not yet on everyone’s lips in the big, wide world of table tennis despite his age of 30, but at the European Championships in Austria he played like a young god and surprisingly made it into the final.

In the final on Sunday evening against the 21-year-old Alexis Lebrun, a blue light would have been necessary. Tatütataa! Duda was picked apart by the phenomenal Frenchman. He lost 0:4 and only scored 21 points. Blackout in the most important moment of your career – table tennis can be as cruel as that.

After he achieved a 4:3 sensation in the quarterfinals against the younger Lebrun brother, the up-and-coming and top seed Felix Lebrun, 18, and he also defeated his favorite teammate Dimitrij Ovtcharov 4:2 in the semifinals, Duda faced the older one in the final brother opposite. Alexis Lebrun played like an AI-controlled wind-up man in Linz. He just hit everything at an unbelievable speed. He hardly made any mistakes. He defeated the German defending champion Dang Qiu 4-1 in the quarter-finals and the Swedish high-flyer Truls Möregardh 4-0 in the semi-finals.

Duda’s silver medal was an enormous success – no one had a chance against the Frenchman Alexis Lebrun

“That went quickly,” said Duda after the almost half-hour finale. There wasn’t much more to say. He never made it to the final – and then it was all over again. However, reaching the final was already a triumph. The silver medal will shine brighter and brighter over the next few weeks. In the summer, Duda suffered from a cartilage injury in his knee, which forced him to take a two-month break from competition.

The same passage from Anton Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony was heard again and again in the Linz Arena during the European Championships. This was because Austria is commemorating the composer’s 200th birthday this year, and Bruckner’s Fifth also contains a sequence of notes that has become famous in arenas around the world – as a guitar riff by the band White Stripes. “Seven Nation Army” is the name of the hit that every sports fan can sing along to. In Austria the original Bruckner version was preferred.

Old and young in the changing rhythm of the generations – this was the motto of the European Championships for the Germans too. Timo Boll, 43, recently ended his international career, as did the 2021 European champion, Petrissa Solja, 30. And the two Chinese-born Ying Han, 41, who is injured, and Xiaona Shan, 41, who was not nominated, were also missing in Linz.

In 2021 in Warsaw, Germany won a total of four titles and seven medals with Boll, Solja and Shan; That was the best German result ever at an individual European Championship (with singles, doubles and mixed). In 2022 in Munich, the DTTB secured one title and four medals. If the 2024 European Championships meant a generational change, then the question was: How many titles and medals are appropriate in times of change? The answer was: no title, but four medals. Bronze for the mixed Annett Kaufmann/Patrick Franziska, silver for Benedikt Duda and bronze for Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the men’s singles and bronze in the women’s singles for Nina Mittelham.

In the end, Kaufmann seemed a little disappointed, but she is predicted to have a bright future

Annett Kaufmann, 18, is the new female fixture in German table tennis. As is well known, she prefers listening to Taylor Swift to Bruckner, and she plays so energetically. In Linz she came third alongside Franziska. In the semifinals, the two missed three match points against the Austrians Sofia Polcanova and Robert Gardos. In the women’s doubles, Kaufmann and Nina Mittelham were eliminated in the round of 16, and in the singles it was over for her in the second round when she met the favorite Romanian Bernadette Szoczs, the finalist. In the end, Kaufmann seemed a little disappointed, but her future is promising.

Nina Mittelham, Sabine Winter and Yuan Wan, three German players, reached the quarterfinals. Among the men there were even four thanks to Ovtcharov, Franziska, Qiu and Duda. “It was an all-round successful event,” said men’s national coach Jörg Roßkopf and predicted close duels with the other four quarter-finalists at the next European Championships: the French Felix and Alexis Lebrun and the Swedes Truls Möregardh and Anton Källberg. “It will continue like this for the next few years,” predicts Roßkopf. For Benedikt Duda this could mean that he might get another chance.