Exploring the Brazilian table tennis player Hugo Calderano’s journey into the top 10 players of the world and his ongoing search for success and commitment to constant improvement.

It’s the afternoon of March 19, 2021, and Hugo Calderano’s friendly face pops up on my monitor. He had recently returned to Ochsenhausen from two World Table Tennis tournaments in Doha, Qatar, where he says he did not play at his highest level.

It was actually a mystery to him why things didn’t go better. He felt happy to be able to play internationally again and thought he could do well. “But maybe the lack of training rhythm due to minor injury breaks could be a reason.”

Hugo’s words sound absolutely nothing like an apology or euphemism. He says it just as naturally as he normally pulls his powerful backhand topspins from half-distance. A move intended to put pressure on an opponent has the opposite effect during our interview; since we have never met and these are the first words I’ve ever heard from him, they confirm the impression I had of the world number 7: he is entirely natural.

Watching his and the other top players’ matches in Doha, I thought it was ridiculous to rally many of the world’s best players in front of a global audience that had been eagerly anticipating seeing top performances – and then have them play only three winning sets until the semifinals.

Hugo, though it concerned him too, clarified that he is in total disagreement with me. His words show that he is a winner who does not play it safe: “[this tournament set up] makes for more unexpected and surprising results. It increases the excitement and therefore the attention on the competitions, which for me is the essence of sports! And – the best players also adapt best to all situations.” After a little pause for thought, he adds, “but at the Olympics, of course, I want to play four winning sets.”

Olympics 2021, the games whose realisation seems to be more or less a kind of dream. We wondered if it would really take place…

“You have to believe in it,” Hugo says. “Everything else is hopeless”. Of course, his excellent instincts turned out to be entirely correct this time as well.

At the time of writing, only two Chinese players were to be allowed to compete in the singles competition in the Tokyo Summer Olympics. That means Hugo could have been seed one through four and, if he plays to his seeding, would surely be in contention for a medal. Lots of “ifs” at the time, but the possibility was more likely than a miracle.
In sports generally, a seed is a competitor who is given a preliminary ranking for the purposes of the draw. This is the surest way to have the athletes play against those on their level as well as ensuring that the best do not meet till later in the tournament.

At the time of publishing, we now know that Hugo qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as seed No.4, being the best non-Asian in the world ranking. He later became the first Brazilian and Latin American to reach the quarterfinals of table tennis in the Olympic Games.

Being a medal contender at the Olympics is an amazing accomplishment for a table tennis player born and raised in Brazil. Winning the bronze medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing in 2014 had truly confirmed Hugo’s potential, though any doubts would already have been previously dispelled as he had reached the top 100 of the men’s world rankings six months prior.

Four years after that, in November 2018, Hugo had made it to the world top 10, a feat never achieved before by another player from Latin America, so I had to ask him about the journey from top 100 to top 10 and how he felt looking back at his achievements.

“When I got to the top 100, I didn’t have the express goal of reaching the top 10 in the world rankings. My focus was simply to improve and my ranking should be the result of my development. But of course I am proud to have done the work necessary to get there and stay in the top 10 for the last two and a half years…

Compared to most Asian players who could train in a well-organised way from very early on, I don’t have the same extensive technical foundation. But I grew up in an athletic family, playing a lot of volleyball and doing all kinds of sports, which helped me become fast, smooth, and explosive. My technique at the table was not and still is not the best, but my physique more than makes up for that. Plus, after I moved to Ochsenhausen in 2013, I continued to work on my physical attributes with my athletics coach Mika Simon. I’ve found that being stronger also means being able to handle harder training.”

Among Hugo Calderano’s performance skills are strength and suppleness, and he makes it clear that seeking is another one.

“I try to explore and discover things. Where I come from, this was a necessity. There was no structure or organisation in table tennis, I had to figure everything out on my own. In the beginning, I just did games in training, which helped me understand what I needed to do in the game to win. I was testing things out and figuring out what was good and not so good. I think that was the best way because I made mistakes, was able to process them, and I realised what I needed to change to be successful. In this way, not having structure and organisation gave me space and freedom.”

Hugo was his own man from the beginning, which he still maintains, enjoying the creative processes in finding solutions to tasks and taking on challenges. The best turn of phrase would be to speak of an inner source from which energy flows permanently. I wondered if this was the reason for him finally deciding to focus on playing table tennis, but the answer came quickly and true to form, succinctly: “No, I found out that I was too small to be able to become a world-class volleyball player.”

Laughing softly in front of his monitor, he elaborated: “Seriously, I preferred table tennis because I got the opportunity to compete in international championships at a young age and volleyball couldn’t give me that. In the table tennis world, I also met a lot of nice people who I enjoyed being with. And table tennis is also more complex than volleyball, so there are more things to discover. The day I can’t explore anything in table tennis, I’ll stop playing immediately.”

Prompted by this unwavering display of his exploratory nature I asked him, what was he currently seeking? “Something that comes naturally; the best researchers don’t always know exactly what they’re looking for, they research until suddenly they make discoveries that they then become more and more immersed in.”

Hugo went on to explain that he is working on playing aggressively, optimistically and with joy as he always has, but that he also wants to develop his skills in acting closer to the table. He is clearly passionate about displacing the well-established Asian dominance in table tennis, eager to continue climbing the rankings.

He has enjoyed his successes in this area, beating Fan Zhendong 4-2 in the quarterfinals of the World Tour Grand Final in 2018 but more often it ends up like in the ITTF final in Zhenzhou in 2020 November, when he unfortunately lost 1-4.
“In that match, I had good opportunities in three lost sets but didn’t take them. Fan is strong, fast, and smart.

Hugo continues explaining, “the difficulty is keeping the level you have the few times when you beat him, and to repeat it. He is so incredibly consistent! I can play at his level but usually only a few sets. That’s why it’s so difficult to beat him and the other Chinese players over four winning sets. And that’s exactly why I have to work on staying aggressive and keeping the initiative in rallies for longer periods of time.”

I thank him for the conversation and wave a goodbye into the monitor in front of me. As Hugo disappears, two words pop into my head: Freedom and Seeking. Freedom to seek and explore, seeking to get freedom.

Taking charge and owning one’s own development process, taking responsibility for it oneself is inevitable and necessary for braving the rocky road to the top.