Member Associations | 3 Jun 2015

Czech table tennis celebrated its Ninetieth birthday

Celebrations of the 90th anniversary of organized table tennis in Bohemia and Moravia took place on Saturday May 30th in Hodonin

Exactly ninety years went by since the history of organized table tennis in the Czech Lands, Moravia and Slovak began. This significant anniversary of a ping-pong village was greatly remembered and celebrated in Hodonin last week.

The Czechoslovakia, now Czech table tennis definitely had a lot to celebrate. Apart of many other accomplishments, they are pride of an amazing number of twenty-nine gold medals from the World championships as well as in having the second most successful player in the entire history of the world of table tennis. – Bohumil VANA. However it was not only Bohumil VANA who made the country famous, but there are many other famous names who have forever become an indispensable part of the world table tennis history, such as Marie KETTNEROVA, Vera VOTRUBCOVA, Vlasta DEPETRISOVA, Stanislav KOLAR and later after the war Ivan ANDREADIS and Ladislav STIPEK.

All these and many others have contributed to the fact that table tennis is one of the historically most successful sports ever practiced in the Czech Republic. Surely it is no coincidence that the Czechoslovak table tennis players still carry the forth place in the number of medals from the world championships behind „great ping pong countries“ of China, Hungary and Japan.


Celebrations of the 90th anniversary of organized table tennis in Bohemia and Moravia took place on Saturday May 30th in Hodonin. Apart of a grand Czech delegation, the Czech table tennis for remotely promoted and congratulated to by the leaders of the World and European table tennis organisations- Thomas WEIKERTand Ronald KRAMER.

So called Galadne, was attended by many prominent personalities of the Czech table tennis, as well as special guests from abroad. Amongst the most attractive certainly belonged to the trio of world champions coming from Hungary István JONYER, Tibor KLAMPAR and Gabor GERGELY.
The extremely rich program offered many examples of exhibition matches, such as the younger vs. older generation match between Tomas TREGLER (current CZ representant) and the legendary Elisabeth KREJCOVA-FURSTOVA as well as the "golden age" match played by Jindrich PANSKY, Marie HRACHOVA, Josef DVORACEK and Alice GROFOVA-CHLADEKOVA. The celebration in Hodonin could of course not happen without the presence of the current Czech table tennis representatives.

Besides the aforementioned Tomas TREGLER, the art of current ping pong was as well presented by Iveta VACENOVSKA, Hana MATELOVA or Kateřina PENKAVOVA. The highlight of the program was a 30minutes long speech presented by the Vice World Champions in doubles from 1985 Jindřich PANSKY and his long-term colleague and friend Milan ORLOWSKI.

During the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Czech table tennis in Hodonin the Hall of Fame of Czech table tennis was enriched by 8 new grand names. Its founding members -
Milan ORLOWSKI, Jindrich PANSKY and Petr KORBEL have inaugurated their new colleagues Marta LUZOVA-HEJMOVA, Eva POKORNA-KROUPOVA, Eliska KREJCOVA-FURSTOVA, Libuše UHROVA-GRAFKOVA and in memoriam: Ladislav STIPEK, Vlasta VLKOVA-DEPETRISOVA, Vera JAKESOVA-VOTRUBCOVA and Vaclav TEREBA.

The Czech table tennis is more than alive. With humility and reverence it constantly looks into the future. And it hopes to be as successful as during the past ninety years..