Waldner finished his contract with the club. Timo Boll: "Was yesterday's match against us the last one for Jan-Ove Waldner?" referring to the Bundesliga semifinal between Borussia Düsseldorf and Fulda-Maberzell. This ended his career at the international elite level, at the age of 46 years. In 2012 he began playing for Spårvägens BTK. On 11 February 2016, Waldner played his last game in the Swedish first league for Ängby/Spårvägen and officially announced his retirement as a player. When he retired, Waldner had been playing international elite level table tennis for more than thirty years, which is somewhat unusual in the table tennis world given that hand–eye coordination and quick reactions are essential. Some young Chinese players whom he has recently played against were trained by those he played against in the 1990s, who were in turn trained by others he played in the 1980s. He is one of the seven table tennis players who competed at the first five Olympic Games table tennis tournaments since the sport's introduction at the Games in 1988. The others are Swede Jörgen Persson, Croatian Zoran Primorac, Belgian Jean-Michel Saive, Hungarian Csilla Bátorfi, Serbian-American Ilija Lupulesku, and German Jörg Roßkopf. He was also the first of only five male players in the history of table tennis to achieve a career grand slam (World Champion, World Cup and Olympic gold medal winner in singles) (in 1992). The others are: Liu Guoliang, China (in 1999), Kong Linghui, China (in 2000), Zhang Jike, China (in 2012), and Ma Long, China (in 2016). In popular culture In the US TV series The Office, the character Dwight mentions Waldner as one of his heroes in "The Deposition" episode. Waldner is also mentioned in season 2 episode 10 of the Netflix original series BoJack Horseman, where one of the characters calls him the Michael Jordan of table tennis. Olympic Games 1988 Final 8 in single, final 8 in double 1992 Gold medal in single, first round in double 1996 Final 16 in single, final 8 in double 2000 Silver medal in single, final 16 in double 2004 Fourth in single, final 8 in double World championships 1983 Silver medal in team competition 1985 Silver medal in team competition 1987 Silver medal in single, silver medal in team competition 1989 Gold medal in single, gold medal in team competition 1991 Silver medal in single, gold medal in team competition 1993 Bronze medal