Timo Boll: "We Were Hungry And Now We Are Satisfied" (Photos)

Right after Timo Boll won the last point against Hong Kong's Jiang Tianyi, Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Jorg Rosskopf ran to hug Boll, while Bastian Steger, who was warming up for his possible match,also ran to celebrate with his team mates. According to Steger, he had never run as fast as he did there. It was like Usain Bol, he added.

With the bronze medal got in the team event, Dimitrij Ovtcharov became the first European table tennis player who wins two olympic medals at the same Olympic Games. Besides, there is no European table tennis player who has clinched more olympic medals in his career than Ovtcharov. The German player said to be happy and proud of his fate.

Steger talked about their bronze medal: "The pressure was huge, Maybe our will to suceed was bigger. We activated our reserves once again." This is a dream come true. I dreamt of this since I started playing table tennis and now I still cannot believe it. We got something really big here."

Dirk Schimmelpfennig, Sport Director of the German Federation, talked about his team's whole performance: "We watch a great match for the bronze medal with a great German team during the whole competition. We won 2 medals of the 12 ones available. 6 were to China, two to Singapore and one to Japan and South Korea. We reached everything that we could reach here. We had never been as close to beat China as now. This reflects the work done by players and training team in the long time. We have worked to reach success but it never is guaranteed."

Timo Boll about the bronze medal: "The bronze medal is a compensantion and an evidence that I haven't forgotten anything. I'm satisfied because I could help the team. I fought for every ball and didn't give up any point. If I had played horribly in the team event as I did in the singles, I wouldn't have been able to bear it.  We were hungry and now we are satisfied."

Steger about as he was warming up for the deciding match against Tang Peng : "I was ready to play, of course, because it's my task. But I hoped that Timo won the third point. I barely could watch the match, it was horrible."

Jorg Rosskopf about the bronze medal: "We got the maximum prize that we could get from the bad draw. There are many feelings which we had during the tournament. These days and weeks were tense. Now the party atmosphere comes. Now we all can celebrate.

Photos and info. source: Tischtennis in Deutschland's Facebook page - tischtennis.de