Here is an interview with Joachim Voigt:

Joachim, congratulations, you are now head coach of the German team. What is your goal?

Thank you very much. Germany was very successful in the past. But after 1992 we lost our strong position. 2008 in Beijing we even lost a place under the Top3. The goal is, to be one of the best three nations in the world. Actually China is out of reach, but to compete with France and Korea for the second and third position must be the goal for 2012.

What are main problems in Germany?

I think we shouldn't talk about problems. We should talk about possibilities. And there are a lot of in Germany. All of our players can improve their level, even if they are still Top10-players. We will try to offer better possibilities for training to them that will be main part of my work and if we succeed, Germany can make a step back to the top. We also have a great number of talented players which are under 18 and highly motivated to play in London 2012 or 2016. We have also a very good structure in able-bodied table tennis, which we will try to use in the future. And right now, we have a good team of highly motivated people around the national team. The federation, the volunteers, the officials, the coaches, everybody is working very hard to help us go step by step forward.

That sounds really very good. How are you working with the U18-players?

First step always is to organize very good training at home for them. That's the basic. If we see them and we think, that they have a good chance to reach a top level, we offer such possibilities, cooperating with the other federations in Germany. If they use it and if they are motivated to work hard, they participate on our national training camps. And then we will try to bring them to the International tournaments very early to learn. Last step is, to integrate them into the national team and qualify for Paralympics Games.

So we will see a lot of young German players in the near future?

For sure. We will have a very young team at the German Open in September. But also in Czech republic, Slovenia and the European Championships in Genoa we will have a number of U18-players. I would be very happy, if we could get at least one U18, U21 or U24-tournament per year. It would help us a lot. Should be a cheap tournament, where we make sure, that players can play a lot. I think this is something IPTTC or now ITTF should think about. In Germany we have German Championships for young players under 24 and we have year by year more participants at home. But also we want to cooperate with other nations. We have good contacts with a lot of nations. I hope we will have many trainings together with others. It could help us and of course also them.

You said before you will cooperate with other federations in Germany. What is the structure of German disabled table tennis?

We have a federation in Germany for all kind of disabled sports, called DBS, Deutscher Behinderten Sportverband. It is also the NPC for Germany. Additionally we have a federation for the wheelchairs, DRS, Deutscher Rollstuhlsportverband. Those two federations are cooperating and the DBS is the leading federation for all athletes. On the other side we have the DTTB, Deutscher Tischtennis Bund, which is the German table tennis association. They are responsible for all kind of able-bodied table tennis. in both federations, DBS and DTTB, we have regional federations which organise the local sports. We want to cooperate with DTTB and regional federations to use their trainings centres for our athletes.

Are you working together with DTTB?

Till now it is totally separate. We are talking with DTTB about different ideas of cooperation, but we have nothing fixed on paper till now. But they were always very positive when we asked them in different cases about helping us. So it's a very friendly way of cooperating now.

How about tournaments like national championships. Do you play them separate?

Yes, it's separate. We have the Germany championships for the top players. We have another tournament for players on lower levels. Both organized by DTTB. Then we have championships for standing players, organised by DBS and another for wheelchairs, organised by DRS. And of course there are some more German championships, e.g. for juniors or seniors.

Thank you for this short interview Joachim.