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The Golden Generation Of Hungarian Table Tennis |
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TTM 
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Joined: 04/17/2021 Location: EU Status: Offline Points: 95 |
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 Topic: The Golden Generation Of Hungarian Table TennisPosted: 06/24/2023 at 6:57pm |
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The story of the 1979 World Table Tennis Championships heroes - the legendary Hungarian trio of Istvan Jonyer, Tibor Klampar and Gabor Gergely. At their peak, they formed the strongest team in the World. |
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zzzuppp
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Joined: 02/10/2004 Status: Offline Points: 762 |
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Posted: 06/25/2023 at 9:24pm |
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Well done. Might help if the narrator could pronounce Hungarian names properly - Gergely (Gur-gay (hard G's), Tibor (Tee-bor), Sido (Shee-do) etc.
Also the last major accolade for a Hungarian was arguably Klampar's 1988 Olympic singles semi when he was long past his prime.
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Skyline
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Joined: 07/01/2007 Status: Offline Points: 3864 |
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Posted: 06/25/2023 at 11:43pm |
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Yes GerGuy not Gergay though
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Zwill
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Joined: 11/10/2017 Location: Hungary Status: Offline Points: 174 |
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Posted: 06/26/2023 at 3:01am |
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It's Gergey, the two "e" should be pronounced the same way. Not the only name that is butchered in the video but it looks like a text to speech voice so what do you expect?
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Joola Zhou Qihao S-ALC 90
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BeaverMD
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Posted: 06/26/2023 at 9:34am |
Since you're from Hungary, why were they not able to keep this momentum going. I imagine if the trio were the champs, there were some good juniors that were training right behind them.
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Zwill
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Posted: 06/26/2023 at 3:13pm |
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I didn't live back then yet so I cannot say too much. In my opinion the fall of the Soviet Union was the main reason. Back then many organizations could finance teams and keep players on a payroll.
For example there were Army clubs, Miner clubs, Postmen clubs etc etc. With the end of the Soviet Union a lot has changed and it was no longer possible that soldiers were not actually soldiers but playing table tennis professionally or some other sport. Also probably a lot of other interests came in with the "freedom", movies, western stuff, western lifestyle, computers, consoles whatever and that had a big impact on people especially children. But this might be a worldwide issue as well. Let's just imagine if the Chinese goverment wouldn't back table tennis at all what would happen with the Chinese team in 40 years. They'd have more limited or even very limited facilities, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th tier players who keep the top 5-6 players in shape would get paid less and less, so there would be less interest in players to pursue table tennis, and lesser pool of people to select the best. Also why would anyone want to play table tennis when you have to be very good to make a living (and not even a great living) and I bet most of these best players could do well playing football in 2nd league or even first league for a lot more money. |
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BeaverMD
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Posted: 06/27/2023 at 9:41am |
Thanks for the interesting insight! What you wrote makes sense. I just thought that maybe with a world champion team, there should have been some younger players who were ready to take over. Example, with Sweden after Waldner and Persson, they had Hakansson and Lundquist. Not the greatest players but still known names. A quick search of Hungarian table tennis players in the last few Olympics, I can only recognize Janos Jakab. But like you wrote, there are better paying activities than table tennis.
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klampar_fan
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Posted: 07/01/2023 at 7:30am |
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The generation that followed the golden three was not nearly as good as Klampar, Gergely and Jonyer. Tibor Kreisz and Janos Takacs were members of the team but they did not get enough international competition. I only remeber Zsolt Harczi in the 80s. And later on table tennis was not interesting enough for young players. You could earn more money in nearly any other sport. The team event was broadcasted live on TV in 1979 and as a young boy I was fascinated to see how the hungarians could beat the chinese
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BeaverMD
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Posted: 07/05/2023 at 6:26am |
That CNT line-up, just like now, was a murderer's row of players. Three of them (Yuehua, Geliang, and Zhenshi) would later end up top 4 in the singles. Geliang did not play in the team finals but that guy would be scary to play against.
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Zwill wrote: