La Garde du Voeu Hennebont Tennis de Table was founded in the year 1969 and has become the leading club in the Bretagne since then. The club has almost 200 members and is managed by a combination of the communal government of Hennebont and the federal government of Morbihan. Since 2001, the city’s schools offer regular opportunities for training and a new table tennis centre, led by professional coaches, in order to enforce young players in the region.
The training center is very important for the club, for it is mostly thanks to this institution that a steep rise to the elite has taken place. While playing runner-up in 2003 and 2004 the team rushed to the top in 2005 and secured the national title, defended it in the seasons of 2005/2006 and 2006/2007, as well as in season 2008/2009. In 2005 the club also achieved international success: it reached the semifinals of the ETTU Nancy Evans Cup with victories over TTC Metabo Frickenhausen and Cajagrande Granada, where they succumbed to the reigning German champions Müller Würzburger Hofbräu after a hard fight.
In the European Champions League, the French top club is now entering its sixth year. In the opening year 2005/2006, the team dropped in group A due to Kalinikos KREANGA’s injury to the 4th position, though very narrowly by the ratio of games only, behind LKS Odra Röben Gloska. The following season held the same result in store for them, although they were far from inferior.
For example, they scored a surprising away win against Grenzau after narrowly losing the home game and they only just lost to ASDTT Pieve Emanuele Milano twice, showing that 2nd place would have been possible. Two seasons ago they reached semi final. Ochenshausen beat Hennebont for the place in the final. The Olympic champion of 2004 RYU Seung Min and Kalinikos KREANGA led French side in previous season and they will have same roles in new season. Last spring they lost in quarter final, again from Ochsenhausen (two times 3:1 for host, Germans went to semis thanks to better set difference) but now the goal is again semi-final of ECL.
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ETTU, the European Table Tennis Union, is the only authority recognised by ITTF, the International Table Tennis Federation, for governing and developing the table tennis sport in Europe. According to the latest information, more than 4 million people are playing competition table tennis in the territory controlled by ETTU. With its 57 Member Associations, ETTU is the largest ot the 6 ContinentalTable Tennis Federations recognised by ITTF.