If there was one thing the teams competing in Ultimate Table Tennis’ fourth edition found inadequate about the hotel they were put up at, on the outskirts of Pune, it was the gym.

“Not up to the mark” was the feedback from multiple paddlers — Indian and foreign — who lit up the arena during the 18-day tournament. The mediocre gym did, however, have a constant visitor each day of the three weeks he spent in Pune: Benedikt Duda.

The German southpaw — with a reputation of being a fitness freak — made the most of the limited equipment since he “cannot afford to miss even a single day” in the gym. At peace with himself when training with weights, Duda — or Benny, as he is popularly known on the circuit — was in his element when it came to donning the Chennai Lions’ yellow.

Proving his worth

Not only did he overshadow Sharath Kamal, the Chennai captain, but he also remained unbeatable for almost the whole tournament. His loss to Harmeet Desai in the final — his first — was a decisive factor in Lions relinquishing the crown to Goa Challengers. Despite the defeat, Duda returned home with the award for the edition’s most valuable male player.

India has always been a happy hunting ground for the 29-year-old, who followed in his father’s footsteps and chose table tennis over football in his childhood. In 2012, he made it to the singles quarterfinals of the World Youth Championships in Hyderabad. That achievement gave him the “belief” that he could make it as a professional paddler.

Then in 2017, he reached the doubles semifinals of the India Open, an ITTF Tour (now rechristened WTT) event in New Delhi. The bronze was his maiden World Tour doubles medal.

Cut to 2023, and the UTT performance comes as no surprise. “You can be rest assured I will keep coming back to UTT since India is my lucky charm,” says the soft-spoken Duda in a candid chat with The Hindu.

He may not be as stylish as Timo Boll, the southpaw who has been carrying the German table tennis flag for even longer than Sharath has been carrying India’s. He may not be as innovative as Dimitrij Ovtcharov, the former World No. 1 who is among the most accomplished Olympic paddlers in the sport’s history. And he may not be as powerful in his strokeplay as Dang Qui, the top German paddler currently (Ovtcharov is struggling with fitness issues).

But Duda, over the last decade, has slowly and steadily carved a niche for himself and emerged as the most consistent German player on the circuit.

The pillars of success

He has no qualms in admitting that “fitness and hard work” are the main pillars on which he has constructed his campaign for success. It wasn’t until he was 16 — six years after he chose table tennis over football, since “the new school coach was too loud for my comfort and didn’t like me much” — that the fitness bug bit Duda.

Despite being hailed as a possible successor to Boll, in the rich German tradition of left-handed paddlers, Duda suffered a setback at his first European Junior Championships in 2011.

“I was a good doubles player in the juniors. And I was paired with a French guy. The French team was the best back then and I was pleasantly surprised that one of them wanted to play with me. Being seeded in the top four, I was on quite a high, anticipating my first continental medal,” Duda recalls.

“And we lost in the first round. I was moving so slow, had no power in my legs, and then the French coach was so ****** with me because I kept on making mistakes. That’s when I realised I had to work on my fitness to excel at the higher level and started with a plan. Since then, with every passing year, I have become fitter and a much better table tennis player.”

He may have lost out on a European Junior Championship medal back then, but over the last decade, Duda has ticked virtually every box that a European can aspire to check off. In addition to seven doubles crowns and a singles title at the German National Championships, he has two European Championship gold medals (team, 2019 and 2021) and the World Team Championship silver in 2022.

The cherry on top is the team silver at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, “the biggest stage for a sportsperson”. But he doesn’t want to rest on his laurels. Having emerged from the shadows cast by Boll and Ovtcharov, he wants to repeat the Tokyo story in Paris next year.

The next target

“To repeat it is the key. Besides defending the team medal in Paris 2024, I want to make it to the podium in the singles,” he says, with glittering eyes. “And also obviously we have the European Team Championships, where we are the defending champions. I just want to repeat, take all the medals that we won the last time around and achieve greatness.”

The real test for any non-Chinese paddler is breaching the Chinese wall. No men’s singles player or team has been able to displace China from the top of the Olympic or World Championship podium for almost two decades. In this period, Chinese players have featured strongly in the men’s top 20, despite a multitude of rule changes and ranking-system alterations.

But Duda — who has reigned supreme against a Chinese paddler only twice in more than 20 attempts on the Tour so far — is optimistic of breaching the fort.

“They are the best. They are on top of everything at the moment or like the past many years. But they are struggling somehow because the new generation is not really unbeatable. When you stretch them in a match, you get a sense that the next time it will be your turn,” he says.

“That’s the kind of motivation: to just beat them once. And as the recent results have shown, they are beatable. Like 20 years ago you could not think of it. Now you hope that the first such occasion in your career will happen any time. So you have to be ready for it.”

Whether he breaches the Chinese fort or not, you can be certain that Duda will continue to be at peace with himself in the gym wherever he finds himself in the world!