by Laszlo Peli, Hungarian Table Tennis Association

Training sessions will restart under the watchful eye of Zoltan Batorfi, the head coach but there is one proviso.

“We had our tests today and there will be more testing on Sunday morning, just before the scheduled start of the training, if everyone tests negative, we will start.

The National Sports Health Institute published a statement about how training can be re-started. We will meet all points of the regulations and to comply with hygienic conditions. The players will be far enough from each other at the two ends of the table and we will also take care of the distance between the tables.

Balls, which everyone uses pose the greatest threat in this situation, this is why we will try to disinfect all the balls every day and of course, we will also clean the hall.” Zoltan Batorfi

Training on home ground

Members of the national team who returned home to the provinces and will not be involved in the training sessions are Dora Madarasz, Mercedes Nagyvaradi and Orsolya Feher.

Dora Madarasz has the good fortune of having a robot at home in Kecskemet, Mercedes Nagyvaradi will focus in fitness, for Orsolya Feher, who is in Transylvannia, to return to Hungary a period of quarantine will be needed.

“We start with a very small group, there will be four or five players in a training session. We always try to find male training partners for our highest seeded players but now it is not an option.

Tired of quarantine, everyone really wants to train again, so there will be a lot of energy, I am sure about that; then there will be a low, this will happen also due to the fact that we do not know when our next competitions will be held. At this point we will have to solve the problem of maintaining motivation. It can also pose a problem that we usually work on a minimum of four or five tables with at least ten players. Partners can be changed regularly, this way the practices are not so monotonous but now we do not have other options.” Zoltan Batorfi

New opportunity

It is a limited situation but for Zoltan Batorfi it provides an opportunity to learn and practise new technical elements, for which in normal circumstances there would not be insufficient time owing to competitions.

All training sessions will be conducted under the relevant regulations deemed necessary by the National Sports Health Institute, the National Sports Centres and the Ministry of Human Resources.

It is only the women’s team that will return, the other teams must wait.