Hayden Meikle counts down the 150 greatest moments in Otago sport.
Number 128: Algie takes on the world (1948)
The major difference between me and Russell Algie was that he was about a million times better at the sport.
Algie was our first great star of table tennis, and an utterly dominant figure during and after World War 2.
The Dunedin-born man won the New Zealand singles title in 1939, 1945, 1947, 1949 and 1951.
He won the Otago singles championship for 11 straight years, and was one of the first players to be inducted into the New Zealand Table Tennis Hall of Fame. With his brother, Afton, he won the Otago doubles title in 1939 and 1940 and, with his then-fiancee Barbara Williams, he won the New Zealand mixed doubles title in Dunedin in 1952.
He won the City of Melbourne title as part of the New Zealand team in 1939, and in 1948 he was New Zealand's first representative at a world table tennis championship, held in London.
A wharf strike that year endangered his trip but he managed to get passage as a cabin boy on a refrigerated cargo ship.
Algie proudly carried the New Zealand flag and reached the final 16 at the event.
He worked as a reporter for the Otago Daily Times for 10 years, with a break for army service. Later he became New Zealand's first professional table tennis coach in Auckland, where he later opened a sports store.
Algie died in 2005.
