Truls Möregårdh was a huge sensation in Olympic table tennis.
Now he is celebrated by the legendary JO Waldner.
“Proud of you,” he writes on Instagram.
Truls Möregårdh was dejected when he saw the draw for the second round of table tennis. It was the toughest possible opposition in the form of the almost inhuman world number one Wang Chuqin, who barely lost a competition in the last six months.
Huge sensation
Truls Möregårdh had faced the world number one eight times earlier in his career, losing every match. The Swede had only taken four sets from the Chinese during all those matches, but in the Olympics, Möregårdh was responsible for one of Swedish sports’ biggest shocks ever, when he won the meeting with Chuqin 4-2 in sets.
Truls Möregårdh played brilliant table tennis from start to finish, and many were shocked in the hall when he took the first two sets of the match. When Chuqin then won the next two – and went up to 2-2 in the set – many thought that Möregårdh would have a tough time. But instead he turned the tables again, and won two straight sets, and is thus through to the next round of the tournament, at the expense of the world’s best player right now.
JO’s tribute
Tributes to Möregårdh have poured in since the sensation became a fact, and now there are also nice words from Swedish ping pong’s greatest of all time. On Instagram, JO Waldner has uploaded a picture of Möregårdh, where he writes:
“Proud of you! All the way now. Never be satisfied”.
For SVT, JO Waldner develops his thoughts.
– Beating a world number one at the Olympics is huge. It is one of the biggest wins at the Olympics of all years, by far. He is world number one, and you have to think about where Truls is (26 in the world ranking), says Waldner, and continues:
– Okay, my victory against Ma Lin (Olympic 2004, round of 16) was also quite impressive in that I was older, had lost my ranking and he was world number two, but Truls beating world number one is even bigger.
However, Waldner is not alone in paying tribute to Möregårdh. Even Mikael Appelgren joins the chorus of praise, with the most powerful words about Waldner in particular.
– It is improbably good. Beating the best Chinese… I don’t know if it happened before except when JO won. It cannot be described, he tells Expressen.
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