Nina Mittelham missed the final at the European Table Tennis Championships in Linz and has to settle for bronze. The 27-year-old from Bundesliga club ttc Berlin eastside lost her semi-final in Upper Austria against local hero Sofia Polcanova 1:4 (10:12, 7:11, 12:10, 4:11, 6:11). Two years ago in Munich, Mittelham won silver, but she gave up injured in the final against Polcanova.
“I’m a little disappointed, but in the end Polcanova played really well,” said Mittelham: “Basically, I’m very happy with the tournament. If someone had told me beforehand that I would come back like this, I would have been very happy. I was “I noticed that I wasn’t physically fit enough to play through the tournament yet.”
Polcanova successfully defended her European title in the final that evening. The Austrian defeated the Romanian Bernadette Szocs, who had knocked 18-year-old Annett Kaufmann out of the tournament in round two, in a close final 4:1 (11:8, 11:13, 12:10, 11:6, 11 :9).
For Mittelham, bronze is a success after the disc injury at the Olympic Games in Paris, for the German Table Tennis Association (DTTB) it was the second European Championship medal after bronze in mixed doubles for Kaufmann and Patrick Franziska. There are further podium places in the men’s singles: Dimitrij Ovtcharov took bronze, Benedikt Duda even had a chance for gold in the final.
