Peter Korbel Chiquita story
Hi
I just found this story from Peter Korbel about the nice story of his carer against the chinese playeers.
it is in czech language so translation under the video..
http://www.bezfrazi.cz/chiquita/
And here is the video from the matches.
Translation will be divided in multiple parts ... keep in mind it is time consuming process . so more of the story will follow.
Thanks UpSideDownCarl for the edit and final touch .
Enjoy
Part 1
China has three hundred million registered players in table tennis.
Three hundred Million!!
I think they have enough players to choose from.
Us (Czechoslovakian players) are something about 32000.
Yet, we are the only country in history that's ever knocked out China in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. In 1991, under the heading CSFR, we had beat them. For the first time the Chinese did not take medal. First and last time. Only three teams have been able to beat them.... the Swedes and Hungarians in the final. And us. Nobody else!
From this tournament in Japan Chiba I remember absolutely everything simply because it was my first world championship. As far as I am concerned, the success we achieved has not been valued properly until today, but for this I feel it and remember it that much more fondly.
I was a junior European champion, but I did not know what I was facing with the level of pro players. We flew in late April. The hopes of everyone from our country were simply that we would get past the main twenty-four team qualification group.
We faced the Chinese in the first group: we lost 2: 3 , but already there we knew that it was possible to defeat them.
And most importantly, in spite of being a youngster from Havirov (name of the city), I defeated Ma Wenge.
Perhaps the name Ma Wengeh means nothing to you, but in 1991 he was somebody. At least in our sport. He was the number 1 ranked player in world.
And I beat him.
In the quarterfinals we met China again. After the first duel, the Chinese obviously did some game analysis and responded. However, I won again and our team finally took the match with the result being 3-2. It was a FANTASTIC SENSATION.
At that moment only one thing bothered me. I could not phone home to notify my family and friends.
I did not know how to inform, or who to share the joy with. It was morning in Czechoslovakia. Everyone there just went to work and all my teammates immediately called their loved ones. I could not. What we had achieved, my father only learned later from the evening news on the television.
Eventually we ended up with bronze medal.
At Prague Airport, when we landed without fanfare, they took us directly to a huge junket in the government headquarters. There I was asked why I had not beaten Ma Wengeho a third time in the individual competition. The question caught me off guard. I replied that for a rookie to championship play to overcome the world number one three times in a row, would be a very hard task to accomplish....
The fact remains that something did bother me about the way I am lost to Ma Wenge in the third match. The draw had us face off in the first round, in the side hall on the far table.
Our duel had a large audience.
The word had gotten around quickly that this young Czech had previously defeated the Chinese icon two times in the team competition. I won the first set. This was when games were still played to twenty-one points. In the second game I led 9-4 when the referee whistled me for a bad service. Therefor I was forced to play him with the referee ruling against me.
To this day I do not understand.
There was a huge debate. I felt I had been unjustly penalized. It seemed to me that the Asian girl who was refereeing saw how the Chinese player was in trouble, and I'm sure that call helped him. The issue is not about whether I could have won. I had such a tough draw for the first four rounds. I would be facing oponents from the world's top thirty. It would be increasingly hard to get through each round.
But I was angry and upset about the principle. I felt I had been wronged.
However this verdict disrupted my focus and I could not recover. Ma Wenge beat me.
I learned a lot from this experience. But I had problems with controlling my emotions throughout my whole career.
Sometimes I can tolerate a little unfairness from the referee or the opponent without problems. But only to a certain extent. When it goes over my limit, it makes me burn with anger.
I realize that I should stay calm.... Everyone always told me that if I could control my temper better, I could have been even better, win more. But there are some bad habits I was unable to change. These days I understand better. Now I can look at the sport from a broader perspective with more of a sense of grace. But the young man in me does not want to hear such talk. Especially not with how successful I could have been if I did not have to face such unfair favoritism and bias.
Back in those days I only wanted to discuss what I did well.
At the Japanese Championships, is where it all started more fully for me because I took home a medal. And, recently, on YouTube, I found a video of the full quarterfinal match. I do have a copy of the match at home on VHS tape. But it still felt really good to see it on YouTube.
Sometime after, coincidentally, I met Ma Wenge at a club in Germany and of course we spoke about the sport of table tennis and our matches. He said, he was the only player left from that whole Chinese National Team squad after their collapse facing our team. The whole team had been invited onto the carpet in honor and then the team was disbanded. Of all the players and coaches, only he was allowed to stay on the team.
My team's surprising performance got that whole Chinese team into real trouble....
As I think about it now, after twenty-five years, I realize I don't really know what my Slovakian teammates are doing in this days...
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PART:2
In Japan, I had already started using the Chiquita: the stroke that made me famous.
At that time, the banana flick still had some flaws and needed some adjustments to be completely functional. It was like a sick child that needed medicine. I figured out the right medicine and over time I got it to start being a useful weapon. Gradually, I developed it into its current form.
I like to experiment and to try to be creative. I always stayed after practice because it was fun, but also, I invented my own ways to play the ball in different situations. I liked discussing various game situations with other players and I had habit of diverting practically any conversation to the subject of table tennis. I live and breathe with table tennis all the time.
Right from the beginning of my career I started trying to figure out effective ways to compete with Chinese and Asian players in general, whose forehands were like a rocket as a result of the penhold style of play.
Back in those days, penhold players were using just a one type of rubber for both forehand and backhand and the backhand for them was mainly a passive stroke. They had to turn on the backhand corner of the table to be able to play a forehand. Because of this, it was hard for them to cover the whole table against a player with an attacking backhand. If they stayed with their backhand, the shots were not powerful. If they turned for forehand on the backhand side, I could hit the ball down the line past them. And if they got pulled to the forehand side, their backhand would be open. Often tactics like this frustrated them.
As soon as my opponent saw that I was preparing for a backhand flip, they knew they would have trouble returning it with their backhand and their return would lack power, and if they decided to turn to play a forehand from the backhand side, they knew that I would take their shot to the wide forehand corner.
I do not know when I first used tactics of opening more aggressively with the backhand. But against traditional penholders it was a great weapon. Nobody had played this way before. Similar shots were, until then, only used in training . But nobody was making their points so effectively this way.
I was constantly working to improve this stoke and it became more and more effective.
They could not figure out an effective strategy against the Chiquita!
At some point I got my hands on a Chinese magazine about table tennis: 128 pages all about table tennis. It had articles that discussed and analyzed everything you could imagine about our sport.
In this issue I found a series of photographs on the Chiquita and the photos were arranged so you could see the smallest details about how to do the shot. The player was familiar to me in a strange way. And I realized it was me.
The Chinese had begun to spy on me and how I executed my famous shot. They focused on the footwork; how I raised my elbow for the shot; where they analyzed the exact contact point on the blade; the position of my wrist.
As I looked at the article, at first I was thrilled. The attention they were giving my technique in the magazine showed that I was really doing something special.
They had begun to fear me.
It was also clear that they were trying to figure out a way to counter my moves. The whole article served primarily to aid them in studying my tactics. They were looking for strategies to use against me and my Chiquita backhand.
A few years later Ma Wenge told me about one of the Chinese training centers in Beijing. At that Center there was a room with walls filled with photos and articles on tactics to use against specific players, mostly Europeans players. Written there were the strengths and weaknesses of many players and tactics to use against them. Before every big tournament, they would study the players who might end up being their opponents.
