Photo: Bildbyrån
All of Sweden’s ping pong prince Truls Möregårdh got a dot in the register after missing a doping inspector’s knock at his home.
After the miss, he was forced to change his habits.
– It is much more difficult than people think, he tells SVT Sport.
After picking up two silver medals during the Olympics in Paris was Truls Möregårdh22, suddenly one of Sweden’s most popular sports figures. Not many had guessed in advance that he would make an entire country feel ping-pong hysteria.
“That’s how you’re fried”
Now Truls tells about the time when a doping inspector came and knocked on his house one morning while he was sleeping. Truls had informed that he would be on the scene, just as he had to, but simply did not wake up to the controller’s phone calls and knocks.
– You sleep in a deep sleep and if they call once when you have the do not disturb mode on, you are fried. Nowadays, I don’t take it for granted that I wake up, he tells SVT Sport.
The higher the 22-year-old climbs in the world rankings, the more important it becomes that he takes care of his mandatory doping controls. He must report his whereabouts on a regular basis so that checks can be carried out. If you miss such a check, you get a point. If you miss three times in a year, suspension awaits, just as it did for the Swedish tennis star Mikael Ymer.
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– It is much more difficult than people think. Everyone thinks that maybe it’s easy and runs smoothly, but sometimes it’s difficult, he says.
Have changed the routines
It was just over a year since the incident occurred, when Truls received a dot. Since so much time has passed, it has now also disappeared. What he did immediately after he failed the doping control was to rearrange the times, so that they would no longer come in the mornings but in the evenings. This means that he can’t always leave home in the evenings, but he still thinks it’s worth it.
He says that: “It didn’t work for me and that’s why I changed it to evenings”. It becomes even more complicated when he is out in the world traveling. Truls generally stay quite a lot in China and East Asia. There he has to take care of the diet, training and stay reporting all by himself. When he is at home, he otherwise gets help from his family and his girlfriend Leah Muskantor.
READ MORE: Olympic hero Truls Möregårdh airs his harsh criticism in table tennis
– I’ve learned from it and every night I get text messages from mum, dad and my girlfriend Leah reminding me of it
Good for you to change your procedures to solve this problem, Truls. It will hopefully just make things easier for you.
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