OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I came across this clip of an emotional Shigeo Itoh winning the 1969 World Singles. It's brief but worth a look. When I was a kid I remember being inspired seeing a film of the same match. Given how crazy hard Itoh used to train, his emotion at becoming World Champ is quite understandable.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/world ... ampionship

Great to watch!

I don't know about you, but when I watch these old videos, I always get the impression the standard that they play at is much more achievable by mere humans like us, whereas when I watch today's matches, they look miles out of our reach.

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I know what you mean and in many ways TT has obviously developed considerably since then (particularly in the way they hit the ball so early) BUT there a few things to remember...

Scholer looked like a simple player but he was deceptively good.

Unlike today there are no highlights clips of play back then - most of what was caught on film is pretty random. If you took random shots of todays matches you would get a lot of ordinary looking short rallies laced with errors. I have seen some longer films of matches from the 60s and 70s and much of it is just amazing.

I have also seen some of those older guys live (eg Johansson, Bengtsson, Hsi En Ting, Chou Lan Sun, Secretin) and they were so good it wasn't funny. For eg I watched Johansson train and he NEVER missed a BH counterhit. As for Secretin...wow!

I have spoken to people who have seen players from the 60s onwards and they are still in awe of players like Hasegawa, Ogimura, Itoh, Li Fu Jung, and Kimura. Japanese footwork training alone was superhuman.

Yes I'm sure you're right

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide