#8 – Paul Drinkhall: England’s No.1 (Part 1)

The Expert Table Tennis Podcast

For as long as I can remember Paul Drinkhall has been the table tennis player us English have put our hopes on for international success. Today, he joins me on The Expert Table Tennis Podcast to talk about life as a professional table tennis player.

Paul’s talent was first spotted at the age of nine (back in the 1999/2000 season) and he has been part of the England squad ever since. By 2008, he was one of the best junior players in the world winning a gold medal at the European Juniors and a silver at the world Juniors.

In the first part of my interview with Paul, we learn a bit more about what life was like for him as an elite junior player. He shares a number of interesting stories and tales of his table tennis training as a boy that I’m sure will inspire many young players and educate any aspiring elite coaches.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How Paul got on at the Heritage Oil Cup last weekend.
• His thoughts on his performances at the European Games in Baku.
• How he first started playing table tennis.
• His typical training load as a ten-year-old player.
• Why some described him as a bit of a “terror” and had to bribe him with Freddos.
• What life was like living at the National Centre in Nottingham.
• How he balanced his table tennis and school work.
• Some of the sacrifices he had to make in order to reach the top.
• The differences between the junior and senior game.

Links from this episode:

• Heritage Oil Cup
• Baku 2015 European Games
• ITTF Team World Rankings
• Ormesby TTC

Thanks for listening!

Thank you so much for joining us. I really hope you enjoyed the show.

As we are a fairly new podcast it would really help us out if you could go and leave us an honest review on iTunes. It’s very simple to do and will help us to get noticed in the crowded world of podcasting.

A big thank you to Paul Drinkhall for joining me on this episode. I’ll have part two of our interview (ETT #9) out next Friday.

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