Going batty: the stars of over-80s table tennis
Set in the cut-throat world of international table tennis, Ping Pong is a documentary that features skilled competitors, fierce rivalry and intense performances in the fight to become world champion.
There are medals, tears, twitchy nerves and quite a bit of swearing. The action criss-crosses the globe from England to Inner Mongolia, where the world championships are held in a stadium full of supporters no less ecstatic than at a Premier League football match.
Again and again you are taken aback by the mental strength – not to mention fitness – that drives its devotees. And like all great documentaries it lifts the lid on a world you never knew existed.
Ping Pong is the story of eight pensioners who compete in the 2010 world over-80s table tennis championships. As sport for the elderly goes, table tennis is perfect. It requires skill and dexterity, but little running around. It also enhances brain fitness.
One of the featured competitors, Inge Hermann, 90, a retired teacher from Berlin, stopped eating and drinking after her husband’s death 15 years ago. She became 'confused’, and it seemed she might end her years in a fog of dementia in an old people’s home. But instead she found table tennis in her early eighties and is shown, a vision of togetherness, whipping her opponents at ping pong.
While the film doesn’t shy away from the very real effects of ageing – creaking joints, gasps for breath, terminal illness – the main lesson the audience will come away with is ping pong’s rejuvenating effect.
'You’re not thinking this is an old person playing table tennis – it’s just their optimism, their hope and playfulness that you see,’ says Hugh Hartford, who co-directed the film with his brother Anson. 'The competitors don’t see themselves as old. So you don’t either.’
The idea for the documentary came from an article in an in-flight magazine on a Ryanair flight from Belgrade to London in 2009.
'I was flying back from holiday and flicking through a magazine and there was a picture of Dorothy DeLow, who was then 97 years old and the world over-85 table tennis champion,’ Hugh says. 'I thought someone who is representing their country at the age of 97 has to have led quite an interesting life and is probably still leading an interesting life. So I ripped out the article, and put it in my pocket and showed it to Anson. We both searched away and found that Britain always did quite well in veterans’ table tennis championships. And the man who always did the best was Les D’Arcy.’
A retired teacher from Wakefield, D’Arcy is, at 91, the elder statesman of British ping pong. He quotes motivational poetry, does weight training and is an unstoppable bullet of a man (his secret for a long life is to hardly eat and never look in a mirror). He is active to the brink of obsession – in the film we see him going about his training ritual, which includes lifting 20kg weights three times a week – and has a capacity for lightness and silliness unexpected in someone so old. It stands him in good stead: he is a 12-times European and world champion in singles and doubles.
The Hartford brothers contacted D’Arcy about taking part in a documentary, but he initially said no. 'He’d done lots of those “fun” packages at the end of the news about an old man playing table tennis and he just wasn’t interested,’ Anson says.
'We explained it would be positive and inspirational and so he said OK,’ Hugh adds.
They arranged to meet at the European Championships in Croatia in 2009 and within minutes Hugh knew he had found his central character. 'He recited poetry, and it was his playfulness: he had all these friends on the circuit. He was the gatekeeper, the route in.’
The Hartfords shot a one-minute trailer, and were excited by the results. 'Les talked a lot so it was quite hard to cut,’ Anson remembers, 'but the image of them playing competitive ping pong was compelling and engaging. I put in a bit of Les’s back story and added some music – Elvis Presley’s A Little Less Conversation – and it just started to have a life of its own.’
At this stage, the aim was to go to the World Championships in Inner Mongolia and make a short 30-minute film. But they needed funding. So they took the trailer to the Britdoc Foundation, which gives financial and creative support to documentary filmmakers. 'They told us to think bigger, to make it more international,’ Anson says. The Hartfords decided to follow players from around the world rather than focusing solely on D’Arcy.
They soon discovered that the veteran league (40-plus) is such a small world that players regularly compete against friends. D’Arcy’s sidekick is Terry Donlon, 83, a former welder from Stockport. They first met at the inaugural World Veterans Championships in Gothenburg in 1982 and have been close friends (and occasional doubles partners) ever since. Thanks to table tennis the limits of their world seem to have expanded as they have got older. Donlon has travelled to competitions
in such places as Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Lillehammer and Yokohama; in 1984 D’Arcy cycled from Wakefield to Helsinki to play.
Donlon won gold in the men’s singles at the European Championships in Bratislava in 2005 and gold in the men’s doubles at the World Championships in Inner Mongolia in 2010 – a triumph captured on the documentary, along with his sudden fall into serious illness. He had first been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, and it spread to his lungs and bones. At the end of the documentary he was given two weeks to live.
Anson, 34, and Hugh Hartford, 32, founded Banyak Films, the independent production company behind Ping Pong, in 2004. Their films are for the most part directed by Hugh and produced by Anson. The initial goal of the company was to make anthropological documentaries. 'Film is a really good application of anthropology because it combines social research with storytelling,’ says Hugh, who did a masters in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester; Anson studied film at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design.
There are medals, tears, twitchy nerves and quite a bit of swearing. The action criss-crosses the globe from England to Inner Mongolia, where the world championships are held in a stadium full of supporters no less ecstatic than at a Premier League football match.
Again and again you are taken aback by the mental strength – not to mention fitness – that drives its devotees. And like all great documentaries it lifts the lid on a world you never knew existed.
Ping Pong is the story of eight pensioners who compete in the 2010 world over-80s table tennis championships. As sport for the elderly goes, table tennis is perfect. It requires skill and dexterity, but little running around. It also enhances brain fitness.
One of the featured competitors, Inge Hermann, 90, a retired teacher from Berlin, stopped eating and drinking after her husband’s death 15 years ago. She became 'confused’, and it seemed she might end her years in a fog of dementia in an old people’s home. But instead she found table tennis in her early eighties and is shown, a vision of togetherness, whipping her opponents at ping pong.
While the film doesn’t shy away from the very real effects of ageing – creaking joints, gasps for breath, terminal illness – the main lesson the audience will come away with is ping pong’s rejuvenating effect.
'You’re not thinking this is an old person playing table tennis – it’s just their optimism, their hope and playfulness that you see,’ says Hugh Hartford, who co-directed the film with his brother Anson. 'The competitors don’t see themselves as old. So you don’t either.’
The idea for the documentary came from an article in an in-flight magazine on a Ryanair flight from Belgrade to London in 2009.
'I was flying back from holiday and flicking through a magazine and there was a picture of Dorothy DeLow, who was then 97 years old and the world over-85 table tennis champion,’ Hugh says. 'I thought someone who is representing their country at the age of 97 has to have led quite an interesting life and is probably still leading an interesting life. So I ripped out the article, and put it in my pocket and showed it to Anson. We both searched away and found that Britain always did quite well in veterans’ table tennis championships. And the man who always did the best was Les D’Arcy.’
A retired teacher from Wakefield, D’Arcy is, at 91, the elder statesman of British ping pong. He quotes motivational poetry, does weight training and is an unstoppable bullet of a man (his secret for a long life is to hardly eat and never look in a mirror). He is active to the brink of obsession – in the film we see him going about his training ritual, which includes lifting 20kg weights three times a week – and has a capacity for lightness and silliness unexpected in someone so old. It stands him in good stead: he is a 12-times European and world champion in singles and doubles.
The Hartford brothers contacted D’Arcy about taking part in a documentary, but he initially said no. 'He’d done lots of those “fun” packages at the end of the news about an old man playing table tennis and he just wasn’t interested,’ Anson says.
'We explained it would be positive and inspirational and so he said OK,’ Hugh adds.
They arranged to meet at the European Championships in Croatia in 2009 and within minutes Hugh knew he had found his central character. 'He recited poetry, and it was his playfulness: he had all these friends on the circuit. He was the gatekeeper, the route in.’
The Hartfords shot a one-minute trailer, and were excited by the results. 'Les talked a lot so it was quite hard to cut,’ Anson remembers, 'but the image of them playing competitive ping pong was compelling and engaging. I put in a bit of Les’s back story and added some music – Elvis Presley’s A Little Less Conversation – and it just started to have a life of its own.’
At this stage, the aim was to go to the World Championships in Inner Mongolia and make a short 30-minute film. But they needed funding. So they took the trailer to the Britdoc Foundation, which gives financial and creative support to documentary filmmakers. 'They told us to think bigger, to make it more international,’ Anson says. The Hartfords decided to follow players from around the world rather than focusing solely on D’Arcy.
They soon discovered that the veteran league (40-plus) is such a small world that players regularly compete against friends. D’Arcy’s sidekick is Terry Donlon, 83, a former welder from Stockport. They first met at the inaugural World Veterans Championships in Gothenburg in 1982 and have been close friends (and occasional doubles partners) ever since. Thanks to table tennis the limits of their world seem to have expanded as they have got older. Donlon has travelled to competitions
in such places as Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Lillehammer and Yokohama; in 1984 D’Arcy cycled from Wakefield to Helsinki to play.
Donlon won gold in the men’s singles at the European Championships in Bratislava in 2005 and gold in the men’s doubles at the World Championships in Inner Mongolia in 2010 – a triumph captured on the documentary, along with his sudden fall into serious illness. He had first been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, and it spread to his lungs and bones. At the end of the documentary he was given two weeks to live.
Anson, 34, and Hugh Hartford, 32, founded Banyak Films, the independent production company behind Ping Pong, in 2004. Their films are for the most part directed by Hugh and produced by Anson. The initial goal of the company was to make anthropological documentaries. 'Film is a really good application of anthropology because it combines social research with storytelling,’ says Hugh, who did a masters in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester; Anson studied film at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design.
There is an anthropological interest in Ping Pong – 'a cross-cultural look at ageing,’ Hugh points out.
The Hartford brothers pinpointed potential players for the documentary by studying results tables from previous world championships, and interviewed them in China during the 2010 championships. They settled on 16 and then whittled them down to eight, guided by where they lived or how they fared in the competition. There was, for example, one lady from Devon who was due to be a lead character, but she was knocked out in the first round. Another Chinese-American player got his dates wrong and turned up a day late. 'All these things had to fit together,’ Hugh says.
Since its launch in 1982, the World Veterans Championships has expanded from an entry of 450 to the 3,200 players who will take part in the 2012 competition in Sweden next week. Administered by the Swaythling Club in Germany, a committee of ex-international table tennis champions and officials, the world championships are held every other year. (The European championships slot in between.) They are open to anyone over 40, competing in age ranges of 40-49, 50-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84, and 85 and over. The number of rounds depends on the number of players, and prizes are never money but medals and trophies. Germany always supplies the greatest number of entrants, followed by Japan. The event lasts for six days, and the mood is one of excited delight, with family and friends cheering from the stands.
The experience levels of players featured in the documentary vary. For example, Ursula Bihl, 90, a soldier’s wife from Stuttgart who won the world championships in Rio in 2008, has been playing in regional teams in Germany since her twenties. 'She’s tough,’ Anson says. 'She says “shit” a lot and has the perfect son, Gerhard, who accompanies her to competitions.’
Dorothy DeLow, 101, from Australia, is the oldest competitive player in the world. She started playing in her seventies when her husband and daughter died in the same year. She is the superstar of the tournament, a pack of reporters and fans forming a scrum around her wherever she goes.
DeLow is steered on to the court in a wheelchair, and it takes her a while to stand upright. But once she does, she silences the sceptics by landing a killer backhand. 'Why are you playing when you are so old?’ asks an English-speaking local reporter. 'I’m not that old,’ Dorothy cackles. 'She says she’s not that old,’ the journalist translates to the gathered crowd. Everyone laughs. DeLow is in on the joke; playing on the way she is perceived.
The femme fatale of the documentary is Lisa Modlich, a wealthy Austrian-born Texan who wears full make-up and nail varnish to signal that, at 86, her appetite for flirting is not a bit sated. 'She was fantastically upfront and competitive,’ Anson says. Joachim, her third husband, is 20 years her junior and collects guns. She has everything to play for. 'Look at this – Jesus Christ, she can hardly move,’ she says with a raptor grin to the camera, after seeing DeLow shuffle into position.
At 83, Sun Lao is one of the youngsters of the pack. He is the Inner Mongolian champion and thinks beer and cigarettes help his game. He lost his first game, but stayed in the documentary: 'with his character it made sense,’ Hugh says.
Rune Forsberg, 86, from Sweden, was chosen to feature in the film because he was the favourite to win gold in the men’s over-85s. Forsberg is the strong, silent type. He first played for his country in his twenties and was seeded six in the Swedish national team. (Les D’Arcy first played for his country aged 70.) Forsberg’s secret weapon is a Zen thoughtfulness. He is shown jogging through the tranquil forests of Sweden as if brooding in prayer. But Forsberg is deeply competitive. In one exquisite moment he asks the interviewer how many times a week D’Arcy plays. 'Three times a week,’ comes the reply. 'I play three and a half,’ Forsberg ripostes. 'Some weeks three, some weeks four.’
Flixton Cricket and Sports Club, Greater Manchester, May 2012. Without warning Les D’Arcy bounds up to the table tennis table with the aim of doing an Arab spring off the corner – a brave move for a 91-year-old. 'It gives you a psychological advantage,’ he explains. 'Your opponent thinks, flipping hell, if this guy can do a handstand, what can he do when he gets playing table tennis?’ The hand-spring was D’Arcy’s trademark entrance until about 10 years ago; now he stops short and limps away.
I am struck by the change in D’Arcy in the two years since Ping Pong was filmed. He took up athletics last year, and has a shoulder injury from doing the Fosbury flop in the high jump at the World Athletics Masters in America last year. He also has an inflamed sciatic nerve and needs a new knee. D’Arcy hates not feeling fit. Yesterday he managed only to go swimming, lift weights and play computer chess: 'By midnight I was flagging.’ Otherwise, D’Arcy in the flesh is no different to D’Arcy on film. I could spot him from afar at Stockport railway station by his tracksuit. And within minutes he was quoting The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Freud.
Terry Donlon, on the other hand, whom I last saw in the documentary apparently at death’s door, is transformed. Fitter and brighter, he surged back with fresh energy to win gold at the European table tennis championships in the Czech Republic last year. 'There’s life in me yet,’ he says. 'Les and I are supposed to be in New Zealand playing in the world championship in 2014.’
As a further boost, Donlon is in love. Sylvia Andrews, 80, nurses him in the documentary, and they are even more devoted in the flesh. They met at a bowling club about four years ago. Donlon is married with three children, but his wife, Rose, has dementia and has been in a home for the past seven years. 'My daughter said, “Dad, my mum is more or less dead.” They want me to enjoy my life. What little I’ve got.’
He can afford to enjoy it because in 2005 he won nearly £500,000 – a share of £8.8 million – in the lottery as part of a syndicate at Brinnington Bowling Club in Stockport. He owns a Prius car and is able to travel the world playing ping pong.
D’Arcy’s wife died 12 years ago; he has six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
The scale of the documentary has taken both D’Arcy and Donlon by surprise. 'We thought it was going to be for the English Table Tennis Association [ETTA] and they could put it on the website so people could look at it and see what old people can do,’ Donlon says. And they are all horrified by how old they look.
The Hartford brothers pinpointed potential players for the documentary by studying results tables from previous world championships, and interviewed them in China during the 2010 championships. They settled on 16 and then whittled them down to eight, guided by where they lived or how they fared in the competition. There was, for example, one lady from Devon who was due to be a lead character, but she was knocked out in the first round. Another Chinese-American player got his dates wrong and turned up a day late. 'All these things had to fit together,’ Hugh says.
Since its launch in 1982, the World Veterans Championships has expanded from an entry of 450 to the 3,200 players who will take part in the 2012 competition in Sweden next week. Administered by the Swaythling Club in Germany, a committee of ex-international table tennis champions and officials, the world championships are held every other year. (The European championships slot in between.) They are open to anyone over 40, competing in age ranges of 40-49, 50-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84, and 85 and over. The number of rounds depends on the number of players, and prizes are never money but medals and trophies. Germany always supplies the greatest number of entrants, followed by Japan. The event lasts for six days, and the mood is one of excited delight, with family and friends cheering from the stands.
The experience levels of players featured in the documentary vary. For example, Ursula Bihl, 90, a soldier’s wife from Stuttgart who won the world championships in Rio in 2008, has been playing in regional teams in Germany since her twenties. 'She’s tough,’ Anson says. 'She says “shit” a lot and has the perfect son, Gerhard, who accompanies her to competitions.’
Dorothy DeLow, 101, from Australia, is the oldest competitive player in the world. She started playing in her seventies when her husband and daughter died in the same year. She is the superstar of the tournament, a pack of reporters and fans forming a scrum around her wherever she goes.
DeLow is steered on to the court in a wheelchair, and it takes her a while to stand upright. But once she does, she silences the sceptics by landing a killer backhand. 'Why are you playing when you are so old?’ asks an English-speaking local reporter. 'I’m not that old,’ Dorothy cackles. 'She says she’s not that old,’ the journalist translates to the gathered crowd. Everyone laughs. DeLow is in on the joke; playing on the way she is perceived.
The femme fatale of the documentary is Lisa Modlich, a wealthy Austrian-born Texan who wears full make-up and nail varnish to signal that, at 86, her appetite for flirting is not a bit sated. 'She was fantastically upfront and competitive,’ Anson says. Joachim, her third husband, is 20 years her junior and collects guns. She has everything to play for. 'Look at this – Jesus Christ, she can hardly move,’ she says with a raptor grin to the camera, after seeing DeLow shuffle into position.
At 83, Sun Lao is one of the youngsters of the pack. He is the Inner Mongolian champion and thinks beer and cigarettes help his game. He lost his first game, but stayed in the documentary: 'with his character it made sense,’ Hugh says.
Rune Forsberg, 86, from Sweden, was chosen to feature in the film because he was the favourite to win gold in the men’s over-85s. Forsberg is the strong, silent type. He first played for his country in his twenties and was seeded six in the Swedish national team. (Les D’Arcy first played for his country aged 70.) Forsberg’s secret weapon is a Zen thoughtfulness. He is shown jogging through the tranquil forests of Sweden as if brooding in prayer. But Forsberg is deeply competitive. In one exquisite moment he asks the interviewer how many times a week D’Arcy plays. 'Three times a week,’ comes the reply. 'I play three and a half,’ Forsberg ripostes. 'Some weeks three, some weeks four.’
Flixton Cricket and Sports Club, Greater Manchester, May 2012. Without warning Les D’Arcy bounds up to the table tennis table with the aim of doing an Arab spring off the corner – a brave move for a 91-year-old. 'It gives you a psychological advantage,’ he explains. 'Your opponent thinks, flipping hell, if this guy can do a handstand, what can he do when he gets playing table tennis?’ The hand-spring was D’Arcy’s trademark entrance until about 10 years ago; now he stops short and limps away.
I am struck by the change in D’Arcy in the two years since Ping Pong was filmed. He took up athletics last year, and has a shoulder injury from doing the Fosbury flop in the high jump at the World Athletics Masters in America last year. He also has an inflamed sciatic nerve and needs a new knee. D’Arcy hates not feeling fit. Yesterday he managed only to go swimming, lift weights and play computer chess: 'By midnight I was flagging.’ Otherwise, D’Arcy in the flesh is no different to D’Arcy on film. I could spot him from afar at Stockport railway station by his tracksuit. And within minutes he was quoting The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Freud.
Terry Donlon, on the other hand, whom I last saw in the documentary apparently at death’s door, is transformed. Fitter and brighter, he surged back with fresh energy to win gold at the European table tennis championships in the Czech Republic last year. 'There’s life in me yet,’ he says. 'Les and I are supposed to be in New Zealand playing in the world championship in 2014.’
As a further boost, Donlon is in love. Sylvia Andrews, 80, nurses him in the documentary, and they are even more devoted in the flesh. They met at a bowling club about four years ago. Donlon is married with three children, but his wife, Rose, has dementia and has been in a home for the past seven years. 'My daughter said, “Dad, my mum is more or less dead.” They want me to enjoy my life. What little I’ve got.’
He can afford to enjoy it because in 2005 he won nearly £500,000 – a share of £8.8 million – in the lottery as part of a syndicate at Brinnington Bowling Club in Stockport. He owns a Prius car and is able to travel the world playing ping pong.
D’Arcy’s wife died 12 years ago; he has six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
The scale of the documentary has taken both D’Arcy and Donlon by surprise. 'We thought it was going to be for the English Table Tennis Association [ETTA] and they could put it on the website so people could look at it and see what old people can do,’ Donlon says. And they are all horrified by how old they look.
'Such a shock!’ Andrews says.
But D’Arcy and Donlon are obviously pleased that their beloved ping pong has had an effect. It has certainly had a positive impact on their lives. Both were sickly children. D’Arcy grew up in Wakefield, suffering from weak lungs like his father, who was gassed in the First World War and then worked in a chemical factory.
But D’Arcy and Donlon are obviously pleased that their beloved ping pong has had an effect. It has certainly had a positive impact on their lives. Both were sickly children. D’Arcy grew up in Wakefield, suffering from weak lungs like his father, who was gassed in the First World War and then worked in a chemical factory.
He died in his early thirties. Donlon grew up in Stockport, one of 10, and spent nine months in a sanatorium with a collapsed lung when he was 14. But this wasn’t his biggest childhood trauma. 'One day when I was four my dad told me to have a bath and he dropped me off at an orphanage.’ Donlon’s mother had walked out. His sister came to collect him when his mother remarried 10 years later.
Both D’Arcy and Donlon left school aged 14 – 'there was no further education in those days,’ says D’Arcy, who has made up for it ever since.
He is almost pathologically driven to learn – psychology, history, poetry. 'I have a big hunger,’ he says.
Donlon’s sister taught him to read by spelling out the names of shops while they sat on the top deck of the Stockport tram. 'The only education we had in the orphanage was the Bible,’ he says.
D’Arcy became a PE and science teacher; Donlon went to work as a welder with a steel fabrication company. And they both, in different ways, crammed in table tennis. D’Arcy started playing when he was 14 at a youth club; Donlon, at 27, in the games room at work. But they didn’t only play – they encouraged others to play as well. 'Sport is extremely important, but the most important thing is to contribute,’ D’Arcy says. He set up an after-school club, as well as coaching children from his estate in his garage (equipped with weights, ping pong table, chess set). Donlon ran a ping pong club at Gatley YMCA, near Manchester, every Sunday for 15 years, and won a prestige gold award from ETTA for his services to the game. 'We’re put on this earth to try and help one another,’ he says.
And of course since retiring, table tennis has really taken off. 'I had fulfilled my marital and family obligations and could concentrate on myself a bit,’ says D’Arcy, who took it up with a vengeance when he was 60. Donlon was European champion in Bratislava, aged 75.
Ping pong even pulled D’Arcy out of a depression after his wife died. 'I stopped playing for a year or so because I was so down,’ he says. Now, he typically plays three times a week; Donlon once.
'It’s meeting the lovely people,’ says D’Arcy on what table tennis means for him, 'It’s also motivating. It gives me a target.’ Donlon agrees: 'I’m friends with I don’t know how many people [through table tennis]. It makes people realise there’s something else besides sitting in the chair watching television.’
As for the documentary, the message is clearly that no matter your age, there is much to learn. 'It’s the attitude to life I find amazing,’ Anson Hartford says. 'If you’re up for it, you’re up for it – you can get as much out of life as you want to.’
'Ping Pong’ is out on July 6
Both D’Arcy and Donlon left school aged 14 – 'there was no further education in those days,’ says D’Arcy, who has made up for it ever since.
He is almost pathologically driven to learn – psychology, history, poetry. 'I have a big hunger,’ he says.
Donlon’s sister taught him to read by spelling out the names of shops while they sat on the top deck of the Stockport tram. 'The only education we had in the orphanage was the Bible,’ he says.
D’Arcy became a PE and science teacher; Donlon went to work as a welder with a steel fabrication company. And they both, in different ways, crammed in table tennis. D’Arcy started playing when he was 14 at a youth club; Donlon, at 27, in the games room at work. But they didn’t only play – they encouraged others to play as well. 'Sport is extremely important, but the most important thing is to contribute,’ D’Arcy says. He set up an after-school club, as well as coaching children from his estate in his garage (equipped with weights, ping pong table, chess set). Donlon ran a ping pong club at Gatley YMCA, near Manchester, every Sunday for 15 years, and won a prestige gold award from ETTA for his services to the game. 'We’re put on this earth to try and help one another,’ he says.
And of course since retiring, table tennis has really taken off. 'I had fulfilled my marital and family obligations and could concentrate on myself a bit,’ says D’Arcy, who took it up with a vengeance when he was 60. Donlon was European champion in Bratislava, aged 75.
Ping pong even pulled D’Arcy out of a depression after his wife died. 'I stopped playing for a year or so because I was so down,’ he says. Now, he typically plays three times a week; Donlon once.
'It’s meeting the lovely people,’ says D’Arcy on what table tennis means for him, 'It’s also motivating. It gives me a target.’ Donlon agrees: 'I’m friends with I don’t know how many people [through table tennis]. It makes people realise there’s something else besides sitting in the chair watching television.’
As for the documentary, the message is clearly that no matter your age, there is much to learn. 'It’s the attitude to life I find amazing,’ Anson Hartford says. 'If you’re up for it, you’re up for it – you can get as much out of life as you want to.’
'Ping Pong’ is out on July 6
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