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In a social media poll, fans of the German Table Tennis League were able to vote for their “TTBL Player of the Month for May” in the run-up to the Individual World Championships in Doha. Six candidates were chosen on the basis of strong performances (in alphabetical order): Hugo Calderano (TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen/World Championship silver medal in singles), Patrick Franziska (1. FC Saarbrücken TT/World Championship round of 16 in singles), Darko Jorgic (1. FC Saarbrücken TT), Anton Källberg (Borussia Düsseldorf), Kao Cheng-Jui (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell/World Championship silver medal in doubles) and Shunsuke Togami (Ochsenhausen/World Championship gold medal in doubles). As in the previous month, World Cup winner Calderano received the most votes.

Hugo Calderano is reminiscent of a phoenix rising from the ashes these weeks. While the Brazilian seemed devastated less than a year ago at the Olympic tournament in Paris after losing the bronze medal match, the star of cup winners TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen soared to unprecedented heights in the spring and rewarded himself for years of hard work with the greatest successes of his career to date in a short space of time. After winning the cup in the winter and the World Cup in April, Calderano crowned his consistently outstanding performances with silver in the singles at the World Championships in Qatar, just in time for the merry month.

As an added bonus for South America's first medal in the 99-year history of the World Championships, the TTBL community voted the 28-year-old their “Player of the Month”, as they did in April. Calderano, who together with the new doubles world champion Shunsuke Togami turned the title fights in the Emirate on the Gulf into an “Ochsenhausen Festival”, is the first TTBL professional since the introduction of the fan vote to receive this award twice in a row.

Calderano's transformation since Paris from the sad figure of a medal candidate to the most exciting figure on the table tennis scene this spring hardly came as a surprise in Macau. Although he would have been “completely depressed” last March because of his shattered Olympic dreams, “I kept believing in myself”.

And rightly so, as his entry into the World Championship final against the new champion Wang Chuqin proved once again. Although Wang was able to turn the tables in the final in Doha after his defeat against Calderano in Macao, the South American underlined his position as currently the most dangerous opponent of the aces from the Middle Kingdom in the previous semi-final against Wang's Chinese compatriot Liang Jingkun, as he had already done in his victories against Wang and world number one Lin Shidong.

In Ochsenhausen, President Kristijan Pejinovic has mixed feelings about the success of his outgoing top player, who wants to focus more on his international goals after the season. "We are incredibly happy for Hugo and would of course love to keep this exceptional player and person, who has always kept his feet firmly on the ground, in our team forever. But it is also clear to us that this is the right decision for him," said Pejinovic.

With the tailwind from the World Cup and World Championship silver, Calderano now wants to say a fitting farewell to the Bundesliga for a world number three: In the Liebherr TTBL final on June 15 in Frankfurt, the right-hander will be aiming for his second “double” in a TTF jersey and his fourth overall in less than six months.

Florian Manzke