Lovers speak of “chess at 100 kilometers per hour”
Elaborate hygiene concepts also ensured football games, tennis tournaments, ski races and other events that millions of people are waiting for in front of the television screen during the corona pandemic. Many sports with less commercial traction have had to cease their activities more or less completely. Table hockey is one of them. Because participants in a table hockey tournament stand close together and have to compete against a number of opponents over the course of a day, the tournaments were for a long time not feasible under the conditions of the local health authorities. In August 2021, however, the Estonian Federation managed to hold the biannual World Championships as planned. Now the resumption of the long-suspended “World Table Hockey Tour” is in prospect.
The game is similar to the more popular table football. One difference is that table hockey is inextricably linked to a company that produces the only recognized tournament games: the sports product manufacturer Stiga from Sweden. Nevertheless, Stiga did not invent table hockey. From 1939 to 1957, the Stockholm company Aristospel had a monopoly on production. Stiga quickly became the market leader after the monopoly fell. Swedish ice hockey legend Sven Tumba helped promote Stiga’s version. Aristospel went bankrupt in 1972.
In table hockey, the player moves all six figures on his team back and forth along fixed lines with a stick (the goalkeeper moves sideways). The sticks can also be turned to control the puck – and for the all-important feint. In official competitions, a match lasts five minutes. Like real ice hockey, it is a fast game. But tactics also play an important role due to the characters’ limited freedom of movement. Lovers speak of “chess at 100 kilometers an hour”.
The pastime became a sport in the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, the first national association was the Swedish one. It was founded in 1987. The first world championships were held in 1989, in which players from seven countries took part. A boom followed. Soon there were more than 20 national associations, including the German one founded in 1995. In 1999 the World Cup took place in Wilhelmshaven, one of the first sporting strongholds in the country.
Until 2007 all world champions came from Sweden. But then the balance of power shifted. Eastern European countries, especially Russia, Latvia and the Ukraine, discovered table hockey for themselves. National tournaments were played for prize money, completely new territory for the sport. The effects were not long in coming. Today the Eastern European countries dominate the world rankings. At the top is the 22-year-old Denis Matweew from Russia. The best Swede, Oscar Henriksson, who is of the same age, only comes in 24th. The 20-year-old Linus Restel from the Hagen-based club Kältestarre 83 is the best German with 102nd place. The best woman, Estonian Maria Saveljeva, is ranked 41st.
Olle Eriksson was one of Sweden’s best players for years. He had started table hockey at the age of four. The teacher was his father. Eriksson became an excellent recreational player who, by his own account, had barely lost a game until he was 29 years old. Then he discovered by chance that the multiple World Cup medalist Truls Månsson was staying with him around the corner. Månsson invited him to a match – and Eriksson got to know a new dimension of the game. His ambition was aroused and he joined Månsson’s club, the Björkhagen Rangers. Within a few years he made it into the top ten in the country. In 2013 he was nominated for the World Cup, but had to cancel. The tournament fell on his daughter’s fourth birthday. Today Eriksson no longer plays at the highest level. “It’s too time-consuming,” he explains in an interview with jW. “If you want to keep up with the best, you not only have to train several hours a day, but also travel to international tournaments.”
The only material merit in Eriksson’s career was the Stiga games, which piled up in his living room for a number of years. The company makes the gaming device available to the best players. Three to four games a year at Eriksson had to believe in it given all the training. A game costs around 70 euros. “That way, you at least save a little something.” When asked about the changing of the guard in the mid-2000s, he said: “The cultures cannot be compared. In Sweden table hockey is still laughed at. In Eastern Europe, tournaments are opened by sports ministers. “
“The world is flat – and we are its center,” it says on puckonline.de, the website of the German Table Hockey Association. The Black Forest Cup takes place in Lahr in October and the Sauerland Cup in Hagen in November.
