Love at first sight
“I was lucky,” says Horatio Cifuentes with a grin. He had been asked how he got into table tennis. In Argentina, a country where people are even more crazy about soccer than in Germany, that was very unusual in 2009. Horatio says that the first gift parents give their children there is almost always a soccer ball. “People only knew ping pong, not table tennis.“ He himself had also been an enthusiastic soccer player (”my role model was Messi") and enjoyed swimming and climbing – until one day, at the age of eleven, he was returning home from a party with his parents and saw other children playing table tennis on the street. He went over, joined in on the spur of the moment – and was immediately hooked. Table tennis was love at first sight for him. He gave up all other sports activities to devote himself solely to this one. In his hometown of La Plata, an hour away from Buenos Aires, there are over 750,000 people, but there was only one table tennis club. The 11-year-old boy joined it, and so began what would become an international career. 

Perhaps Horatio Cifuentes could have gone far in soccer as well. After all, he played with Juan Foyth, who became world champion with Argentina in 2022, for six or seven years. The two are still friends today. But Horatio has never regretted his decision to play table tennis. After all, he has already won the Argentine singles championship six times, participated in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, and is ranked 90th in the world (as of June 2025). At 27, he still has plenty of time to develop. “My forehand needs to get stronger,” he says, “I'm missing a really hard first ball.” On the other hand, he has very fast legs, an explosive backhand, an indomitable fighting spirit, and a good head. 

Two other factors helped him become one of the best players in South America. One was the support of his parents, and the other was his sponsor, DONIC. Horatio dropped out of law school to move to Europe as a teenager, where he found much better training conditions than in his home country, first in Rosenheim and then at the Portuguese table tennis center in Porto. His father, a dentist, and his mother, a math teacher, let their youngest of three sons do as he pleased. And since 2013, when he was 15, DONIC has been supporting him as his equipment supplier. “DONIC has helped me enormously, and I am very grateful for that,” he emphasizes. He would never consider changing his equipment supplier, “I feel very comfortable with DONIC. Everything suits me there, including the equipment, of course.” 

Where will his journey take him next? “You never know,” he says and smiles. He will try everything to play even better, but above all, it is important to stay true to himself. “The most important thing is your mindset,” says Horatio Cifuentes. And, of course, love, especially love at first sight. 

Equipment:
DONIC ORIGINAL TRUE INNER | Rubbers: RH DONIC BLUESTAR A1 max, VH DONIC BLUESTAR A1 max

"For me, DONIC is the equipment supplier where everything is just right.”