Slow Champion No. 7: Alex Ehrlich

Those of you who live in London may have noticed that in August there were one or two new additions to the urban landscape: ping pong tables. With this kind of random invasion, you couldn't help but think that the dearly departed Douglas Adams had a hand in organising it, but it was in fact the work of pinglondon.com, a website set up by the English Table Tennis Association to promote ping pong.

Ping pong is not an activity you'd usually associate with slowness; followers of this sport are regularly exposed to matches of such speed and ferocity they can hardly see the ball. Enter our latest Slow Champion, Alex Ehrlich.

Alex Ehrlich - longest ping pong rally

In a World Cup table tennis match in 1936, Polish-born Ehrlich was playing Paneth Farcas of Romania. Both were pretty defensive players but it was Ehrlich with his never give in, never surrender, never do anything interesting style who had earned the nickname 'king of the chisellers'. On their opening rally, they started a point that would end up in the history books. It lasted for TEN THOUSAND hits. That's more than occur in whole tennis or cricket matches! At the end of the rally, when Farcas finally lost the point, Ehrlich had switched to returning southpaw and had begun a chess game with an onlooker. Had Ehrlich been an easier name to spell, he would surely have done for the phrase "showboater".

The match was eventually abandoned, when the referee's neck locked (hey, you try turning your head 12,000 times), so the effort from both these athletes eventually came to nothing. A story of true Slow Champion behaviour if ever we've heard one.

Ehrlich, we who are about to race slowly salute you. Here's your medal.

Slow Champion No. 8: Mark King
Slow Champion No. 9: James Whitehouse
Slow Champion No. 10: Mudassar Nazar