Vladimir Samsonov or Uładzimir Samsonaŭ ( be, Уладзімір Віктаравіч Самсонаў, russian: Владимир Викторович Самсонов, born 17 April 1976) is a

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...

ian former professional

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

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 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

, in addition to equal fifth in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

and

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

Career

Samsonov is also known as Mr. ECL (

European Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competiti ...

), for winning a record 13 ECL titles (including two of its predecessor,

European Club Cup of Champions The European Club Cup of Champions, often known as the European Cup or ECCC, was a table tennis competition for European club teams. It was organized by the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) annually for men's and women's teams. It was first held i ...

) – 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 longer than anyone else in official ranking history save for the legend of table tennis

Jan-Ove Waldner Jan-Ove Waldner (; born 3 October 1965),Jan-Ove Waldner profile.'' Swedish Table Tennis Federation in Sweden commonly ''J-O Waldner'' (, is a Swedish former table tennis player. He is often referred to as "the Mozart of table tennis."Bishop, G. ...

. 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. He is ranked #18 as of December 2017. He used to hold the distinction of being the player with most ITTF Pro/World Tour titles (27) until

Ma Long Ma Long (; born 20 October 1988) is a Chinese table tennis player and the reigning Olympic singles champion. Widely regarded as the greatest table tennis player of all time, he is the first and only male player to complete a career Double Grand ...

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 and 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 cons ...

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. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingualism, monolingual speakers in the World population, world's pop ...

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

References