Vladimir Samsonov or Uładzimir Samsonau (, , born 17 April 1976) is a

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

ian former professional

table tennis Table tennis (also known as ping-pong) is a racket sport derived from tennis but distinguished by its playing surface being atop a stationary table, rather than the Tennis court, court on which players stand. Either individually or in teams of ...

player. He is known in China as the "Tai Chi Master" because of his superb all-around style, both offensive and defensive.Vladimir Samsonov
nbcolympics.com Samsonov competed at six consecutive Olympics between 1996 and 2016, placing fourth individually in

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

, in addition to equal fifth in

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

and

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

Career

Samsonov is also known as Mr. ECL ( European Champions League), for winning a record 13 ECL titles (including two of its predecessor, European Club Cup of Champions) – three with Borussia (1997, 1998, 2000), and five each with Charleroi (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007) and Fakel Orenburg (2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019). His 13 titles are not only the most ever by an athlete in table tennis, but also more than any male or female athlete has ever won in European Champions Leagues in all sports. He started playing for European top division clubs in 1994, when he signed with Borussia Düsseldorf, then six years later joined Royal Charleroi in Belgium. In 2008, he moved to Spain to play for SuperDivision club Cajagranada, but left after only one season to join the Russian Premier League club Fakel Orenburg, where he finished his career twelve years later. Samsonov is famous for being a top-10 player spanning over a decade. He first joined the top-10 in 1996, then climbed to the top position in 1998. He stayed in the top-10 for 15 years until November 2011. His highest ranking was No. 1 in December 1999. He used to hold the distinction of being the player with most ITTF Pro/World Tour titles (27) until

Ma Long Ma Long ( zh, s=马龙, p=Mǎ Lóng; born 20 October 1988) is a Chinese professional table tennis player. He is a two-time Olympic champion, three-time World Champion, and three-time World Cup champion in men's singles. Widely regarded as the g ...

surpassed him (28). He was runner-up in the 1997 World championships, and is also a three-time European champion (1998, 2003, 2005) and three-time World Cup winner (1999, 2001, 2009). Samsonov was awarded the

Richard Bergmann Richard Bergmann (10 April 1919 – 5 April 1970) was an Austrian-British international table tennis player. Winner of seven World Championships, including four Singles, one Men's Doubles, two Team's titles and 22 medals in total. He is conside ...

Fair Play Trophy at the world championships a record three times, in 2003, 2007 and 2013. In 2021, despite qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, his seventh time qualifying for the Olympics, Samsonov withdrew from the tournament and shortly after announced his retirement.

Personal life

Since the age of seven, Samsonov had been coached by Alexandre Petkevich. Samsonov is a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

, speaking Russian, English, German, Serbian, and Spanish.

References

External links