Brazil's national sport is soccer and table tennis is probably unknown like any country in America but how the hell someone like Hugo Calderano become a superstar? His teammates Vitor Ishiy and Leonardo Iizuka are ranked 45th and 76th, respectively, so it's not as though he had great teammates to hone his skills with. According to Wikipedia, he grew up playing in Brazil, so he didn't have the best resources to develop his skills either.
I would assume table tennis has become increasingly popular in Brazil because of Hugo.
Good point. It seems he didn’t play solely in Brazil. According to his website, Hugo played for a German team from 2014 to 2021 before returning in 2023. So he had access to German table tennis training, which is considered among the top 2 or 3 in the world, during his teenage years.
It’s still very impressive, considering he only had access to what I’d call third-tier training in his childhood. I wonder how good he would have become if he had started training in China or Germany as a kid.
Source: https://www.hugocalderano.com/en/about-hugo/
