Peter Korbel Chiquita story

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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...


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

They had lots of information on me as well.
 
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Yes I hope someone can translate that properly - looks like a really interesting article hidden behind the Googledegook.

I remember that '91 match well - an amazing result, the first time a Chinese team lost in the last 8 since their early efforts in the 50s - and in the same Championships the CNT Women were taken down by United Korea (see 'As One'). Those were the days, when TT majors were less predictable and for a few years China didn't win everything in sight.
 
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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

Thanks bobpuls. You did a great job translating. My final edits were a small thing to clean up the grammatical structure. The translation was no easy feat. Thanks for all that work.


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Great, thanks so much for the clearer translation, bobpuls.

A small point - Korbel is wrong about one thing, that the Chinese Men's Team had never lost to anyone in the World Championships before, except in the Final against Sweden and Hungary.
It's true that they didn't after 1961, but they played in the MT in 1953 (finishing 7th, losing to England, Yugoslavia and - Czechoslovakia!!, each 0-5); in 1956 (3rd, losing to England and again Czechoslovakia, both 2-5); 1957 (3rd, losing 1-5 to Japan in the semi), and 1959 (3rd, losing 3-5 to Hungary in the semi).

Nonetheless the 1991 QF win by Czechoslovakia was quite amazing.
 
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Yes. I think Korbel is referring to the period when China became dominant. Before they became dominant they were not....well....dominant. Since they became dominant, it has been a very rare occurrence when they did not get to the finals.


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Yes. I think Korbel is referring to the period when China became dominant. Before they became dominant they were not....well....dominant. Since they became dominant, it has been a very rare occurrence when they did not get to the finals.


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I think it's rather the time in between, when China wasn't that dominant anymore.
I'm speaking of the time after Liang GeLiang, Guo Yuehua and Jiang JiaLiang.
The time when the swedes took the lead.

BTW: great story. Thanks for translating and sharing Bobpuls and thanks to Carl for editing for better readability.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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I think it's rather the time in between, when China wasn't that dominant anymore.
I'm speaking of the time after Liang GeLiang, Guo Yuehua and Jiang JiaLiang.
The time when the swedes took the lead.

BTW: great story. Thanks for translating and sharing Bobpuls and thanks to Carl for editing for better readability.

I think you may have missed what I was saying. Or what zzzuppp had implied:

A small point - Korbel is wrong about one thing, that the Chinese Men's Team had never lost to anyone in the World Championships before, except in the Final against Sweden and Hungary.

It's true that they didn't after 1961, but...

Of course it is true that before 1961 China was not so strong so they lost before the finals many times. But even when Sweden was top dog, there is only one year in the 80s-90s where China was lower than Silver. And that was 1991: the year Korbel is talking about.

China's team competition medals 1981-2000:

1981: Gold
1983: Gold
1985: Gold
1987: Gold
1989: Silver
1991: NONE****
1993: Silver
1995: Gold
1997: Gold
2000: Silver

The only year in that period where they were out of medal contention is 1991.

Between 1961 and 1979 most years they also won gold or silver. The exceptions were 1967 and 1969. But before 1961 they had only won 3 medals in the team event. Those were all Bronze. China got Bronze in 1959, 1957 and 1956. So, even though the translation says:

Yet, we are the only country in history that's ever knocked out China in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.

I am confident Korbel is referring to the period after Chinese dominance began. And he is not referring to WTTTCs from the 1950s or before.

More likely our translation is just not entirely accurate to what Korbel said. Note that in the translation it refers to the World Cup not the World Championships and yet we know that he is referring to the WTTTCs.

Hope that clears a few things up.

And when you look at the chart that lists the medals for WTTTCs, it is crazy how China is always there. Always....well....except 1967, 1969 and 1991, and, of course, before 1961. [emoji2]



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The ?SFR existence period is very short it is from 23. 4. 1990 to 31. 12. 1992. But I think he is referring to period of his active carer.
And they are just saying world cup in Japan.... 1991. This article is aimed for general public. And I think it was not written by Peter Korbel him self. There are more thinks in the article which are just weird and I will skip them in translation to not create some discussion about it.
 
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Yeah, so we can interpret it in a few ways but I am sure Korbel was simply expressing the familiar sentiment that China is a powerhouse and beating them is a big accomplishment.

After that 2000 WTTTC loss to Sweden, the CNT men's team have not lost since. In the singles the last time China did not take home gold in the WTTC was when the great Werner Schlager won in 2003. So we understand how dominant China has been.

It is quite impressive. And that image of the wall with all the details and tactics to use against all their top competitors, well, it shows you something if you did not already realize it.

Back then China would even train players to "clone" (try to duplicate the style of play) of their greatest competitors. I believe, originally, Wang Liqin was the next Persson clone before China started realizing his actual potential.


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