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Borussia Düsseldorf's Timo Boll in the final of the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL) against 1. FC Saarbrücken
Photo: IMAGO/Harald Bremes / IMAGO/Jan Huebner
For Timo Boll, the dozen is full: The European record champion won the German table tennis championship for the twelfth time with Borussia Düsseldorf.
In the Bundesliga final in Frankfurt, the Rhinelanders beat cup winners 1. FC Saarbrücken 3-2.
Borussia Düsseldorf later made it public that Timo Boll, who lost his final match against Slovenian Europe Top 16 winner Darko Jorgic 3-1, was playing with a broken rib - an injury Boll claims to have caused himself.
It was "the result of a technical error in my game," said the 41-year-old after winning the title.
"For a while now, I've been slamming my elbow into my side before hitting with my backhand instead of pushing it past my body."
However, Boll did not want to attribute his defeat in the final to the fracture: "After all these years, I'm probably used to not going to the table 100 percent fit, so that doesn't make me crazy anymore, while others from would be totally stressed out.
In the game I probably didn't really feel anything because of the adrenaline," said Boll.
Looking at his bulging medical file, the European champion added: "Compared to the back pain I used to have, even that sucks."
Borussia Düsseldorf kept injury secret before the final
His club had declared Boll's injury classified before the final.
Only after winning their 32nd title did the Rhinelanders reveal the injury to the former world number one, who only won bronze at the end of November despite a severe abdominal muscle strain at the World Championships in Houston, Texas.
In the final in the Frankfurt Ball Sports Hall, Boll's team prevailed despite their defeat.
After more than three and a half hours, Kristian Karlsson and Dang Qiu won the decisive doubles game in 3:0 sets against Darko Jorgic and Tomas Polansky from Saarbrücken.
On his 30th birthday, the German national player Patrick Franziska had the great opportunity to make the second Saarbrücken championship after 2020 perfect.
But with the score at 2:1 for his team, the world ranking twelfth lost in 1:3 sets against Anton Källberg.
The Swede saved Borussia in a decisive fifth match after he had already given the defending champion a 1-0 lead against the Czech Polansky (3-1).
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