[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]5-time World Champion and 7-time Olympian Jorgen Persson of Sweden will be the ambassador of the 2018 World Championships which will be held in his hometown of Halmstad, Sweden.
He was the 1991 World Men’s Singles Champion and World Team Champion in 1989, 1991, 1993, and 2000 that broke the Chinese dominance in the sport. He is one of only 3 table-tennis players that has played in 7 Olympics (1988-2012). He has 4th-place finishes at the 2000 and 2008 Olympics so nearly won an Olympic medal.
Invalid shortcodePersson mainly played at the Halmstad and Falkenberg clubs which are located nearby to each other in Sweden when he was training seriously in his professional career and former World Champion Stellan Bengtsson was his primary coach throughout his career. Bengtsson was the main coach at the Falkenberg club for a long time before moving to the San Diego area in recent years. (https://kadence.in/) I was lucky to practice at the Falkenberg club under Stellan Bengtsson many times of trips of 1-3 months each time. I never got the chance to practice with Persson but got to practice with his World Champion teammates, Peter Karlsson and Erik Lindh, in Falkenberg and had many multi-ball sessions with Stellan. One of my highlights of my trip was outscoring World and European Champion Peter Karlsson 12-11 in the two games to 7 points we played. I won one game 7-4 and he won one game 7-5. I was so excited as a teenager to get a chance to play him that I didn’t really know what I was doing in the games. He gave me some tips when we did multi-ball together and helped with my backhand which was nice because he likely had the best backhand in the world at the time.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
