MY EXPERIENCES WITH THE OLYMPICS, BEIJING, CHINA, AND TABLE-TENNIS
With the Beijing Winter Olympics underway with some controversy coming out with the Olympics held in China, I thought I should share my experiences with the Olympics, China, Beijing, and Table Tennis.
When I was young, the Olympics were my lifelong goal. When I entered college, my goal was to make the Olympic team as I took two semesters off early and then a year and a half off directly before the Olympic trials in hopes of making the 2000 team. During my early years of college, I would go home every weekend to practice at my home club and avoided the social life college offered. During the week, I would spend lots of time in the weight room to make my legs stronger as power in table tennis shots comes from the legs and core and foot quickness is of key importance.
TRAINING FULL-TIME IN EUROPE AND CHINA
I took my first semester off college to go to Germany and another semester off later to go to Sweden. Then in 1999 during my 1.5 years off college, I took three tips to China (Shanghai and Beijing) and then many trips to Sweden leading up to the 2000 Olympic trials.
I remember many times during my time training in China, I’m breathing so hard at times with hard footwork drills that at times, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the next five minutes. I remember having to take many breaks as I couldn’t breathe any harder as to give hundred percent when you’re not in the best of aerobic shape in China, can be close to torture. The other kids in the training group are doing everything like a piece of cake as they’ve been doing 5-6 hours a day since age 6.
Then I took several trips to two of the top clubs in Sweden, Angby and Falkenberg. Angby is the home club of Olympic and World Champion Jan-Ove Waldner, who is one of the GOATs, and World and European Champion Mikael Appelgren. I practiced with Appelgren and played him sometimes during winners table in the training group. Waldner was usually never there as he was on trips for tournaments and camps and such. I was once in the same training group as Waldner and we were playing winner’s table and he had just lost to another national team player and if I had won my game, I would’ve gotten the chance to play him and I was trying too hard to win and lost my chance.
I practiced with Waldner’s elite league practice partners (playing 3-4 positions in elite league) and played them many times in winners table. I won practice games against Appelgren and the players playing 3rd/4th positions in the Swedish elite league many times in winner’s table.
At Falkenberg, it was a great learning experience under former world champion Stellan Bengtsson and I practiced both at their school for high school kids and with their elite league team. It was great learning from Stellan as well. I won most of my games against the Falkenberg school players and beat the Falkenberg elite league players playing the third and fourth positions the only time I played them.
I had talked to German legend and soon-to-be world number one Timo Boll’s coach and could’ve practiced with Timo Boll and his team. I would’ve gotten great practice but the German league teams were already set and I wouldn’t have gotten match play so opted to stay in Sweden where I could play tournaments.
I played the 1999 Swedish Open in November in preparation of the 2000 Olympic Trials and had to play Brazil’s World #150 Thiago Monteiro. That was a big test for me as I knew he had beaten 3 of the top North American Olympic contenders earlier in the year at the 1999 Pan Am Games. I was able to win 2-1, winning the final game, 21-11, so got a confidence boost. He beat Timo Boll’s doubles partner in the same group so we were in a 3-way tie.
2000 OLYMPIC TRIALS
Then the first stage of the Olympic trials was in Houston in January 2000. I had to finish in the top eight to qualify for the final stage. I was faced with a situation where I had to win three matches in a row in order to qualify for the next stage and won all three.
The final stage of the Olympic trials in April 2020 featured 8 Canadians and 8 Americans fighting for three singles spots and two more double spots. I think this was one of the hardest years to make the team as there were likely 10 players who were actually world ranked in the top 50, top 100, top 200, or top 300, (2600-2800 by US rating) or the same level but lack of international matches so didn’t have the actual world ranking. It would be hard enough with just American and Canadian-trained players but we always have former Chinese professional players who have basically never gone to school for us to compete with.
The singles trials were in New York. In my singles group, I had to play (world top 30 in 1990s) Cheng Yinghua, a former Chinese national team member, and World #160 Kurt Liu, Taiwan’s former top junior now representing Canada. Cheng may have been the best player in the world in the mid-1980s as he would beat all the Chinese World Champions in practice but was never allowed to play internationally due to being shakehand. At that time, China only wanted pips players and mainly penhold players on the team, a philosophy that was proven wrong later. Cheng had wins against World Men’s Singles Champions Jan-Ove Waldner and Jean-Philippe Gatien at World Cups in the 1990s. I lost to Cheng 3-1 at both stages of the Olympic Trials being the only American to do so. I lost a very close 3-2 match with Kurt. I had a 2-1 lead and lost the 4th and 5th 21-19 and 21-15 so was eliminated in the singles. They would finish #1 and #3 at the Olympic Trials to make the Olympic Singles and Doubles Teams. Kurt lost a very close 3-2 match to World #70 David Zhuang of the US, who finished 2nd and a former Chinese top provincial player. At the 2000 Olympics, Kurt and his doubles partner Johnny Huang had two match points on the French doubles team that made the quarterfinals.
Next came the doubles trials in Toronto and came controversy. One player didn’t qualify in the top 8 by singles but petitioned to enter the doubles trials and threatened with a lawsuit and said he’s the best doubles player in North America. The Olympic coach admitted he found a loophole and I think were other factors and my doubles partner ended up being a 2500-player (top 1000 world level). He was a good player but to beat the top doubles team in North America, David Zhuang (world #70) and Todd Sweeris (world #180), I knew I needed someone top 200 in the world which is likely the level I was playing. Cheng Yinghua (world top 30 level) and his partner Khoa Nguyen (who has beaten Cheng many times) were also there as a doubles team but they are not good doubles players. The player who petitioned would always get killed by David and Todd in doubles. My partner and I ended up beating two Canadian teams, an American team, and finished 3rd in the doubles trials with two teams making the team. My doubles partner and I lost a relatively close 3-1 match to David and Todd but would a better player have been worth a few more points per game? We’ll never know.
Before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Trials, I went to China twice to train in Shanghai and Chengdu. Shanghai was with a former Chinese national team member who I could beat a good amount of the time. It was in the summer in 100-110 degree weather with basically no A/C and high humidity. I could easily go through 5 shirts in one session. In Chengdu, I lost to all the players my first month and a half there and beat all the players there my final two weeks there. I was 210 pounds at the beginning of the Chengdu trip, practiced 5 hours day, took a taxi to subway for a veggie delite for every lunch and dinner, and was 180 pounds at the end of the two months. I think I didn’t have enough tournaments under my belt and had a low seeding so won two matches and lost one match and so was eliminated in that Olympic trials. I have played in Olympic trials since then but with focus now on coaching and lack of proper preparation, it’s hard to have good results. I know I can still play 2700 though as last year, it would have been nice to make the World Championships (which were in the US for the first time) so practiced for a week with last year’s US #1 player who is 2700-2800 by rating. I played about 15 games and most were 11-9 or deuce with me winning some. These days, I know I just have to be ready. When I played 6-time Olympic Medalist and recent World #1 Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Africa #1 and World #11 Quadri Aruna at LA Opens, I gave both of them trouble (lost to Ovtcharov 3-1 and against Aruna, I had 9-9 in 2nd game and was up 6-4 in 3rd game before losing 8-11) and beat the other 2300-rated players in the same group almost as easily as they did.
DARK SIDE OF TABLE-TENNIS AND CHINA
There is unfortunately a dark side to Table Tennis and Chinese table tennis. If you look at videos of world-class players from a few years back (less now), you can see how nearly all players lean in with their head to illegally hide their serve so it’s hard to see subtle changes in racket motion to change spin. This started because the Chinese national team was looking for a way to get an unfair advantage. They have also spun the ball out of their hands on serve toss to give weird spin on their serves. Their players have been faulted at times for this. Even players on the US Olympic team serve illegally. One of Sweden’s main national players became known for serving illegally as well. I’ve lived in Sweden for about a year of my life through six different trips and I’m surprised this can happen in a country that heavily values fair play and who the person is. Are the players or coaches to blame or the ittf for not taking action until more recently? All players also boost the rubbers which is illegal but there’s no test for it. I wonder if mine is the only club that doesn’t know how to boost the rubbers which gives extra spin and speed as players from other clubs talk about it openly like it’s normal. Will this eventually be looked at a period on a smaller scale similar to the baseball era with steroids and cyclists with EPO? It’s a similar situation where the federation knows illegal things are happening but looks the other way. Boosting and hidden serves are not performance-enhancing drugs but performance enhancers. However, I don’t think boosting harms anyone though but is illegal.
BEIJING SUMMER OLYMPICS AND TRAINING IN BEIJING
The last time Beijing held the Olympics was in 2008. There was controversy surrounding Chinese gymnasts possibly being under age as it’s an advantage to be young in gymnastics as you’re more flexible. The IOC checked passports, birth certificates, etc and cleared the Chinese gymnasts. However, what they don’t know is it’s easy to get new passports, birth certificates, etc in China. I once asked a kid I became friendly with in China how old he was and he told he was 8. Then I gave him a look like there’s not a chance you’re 8 and he told me he was really 12. Other players who looked closer to 30 would tell me they were 17 years old. It’s possible all top Chinese athletes in all sports have fake ages. Someone who knew 2008 Beijing Olympic men’s singles table tennis gold medalist Ma Lin told me he’s really two years older than his public birthdate. All coaches in China know everyone has fake ages so how do they make fair selections to determine how good they really are for their ages? I’m sure many are selected by skill but I heard the players who give money to the coaches get selected for teams. I think this has carried over to the US as certain results and other things don’t make sense otherwise.
I trained once in Beijing and I remember being so excited initially as I saw Tang Peng and Hou Yingchou train there first when they were young and was so excited at the possibility of training with them. They were both unknown internationally at that time but would both later go on to be top 20 in the world. However, I ended up playing with players I could beat. I didn’t go to train in China to play with weaker players. I remember being so unhappy training that I complained to the organizer of my trip. The Beijing coach then said the money I was paying was mainly going to hotel and not to him so he didn’t care and gave me weaker players. I also over-trained and I remember hating table-tennis for the first time in my life that trip and after. My trips to Shanghai were more positive experiences with friendly players and people I could meet after practice. After 5 different trips to China, I learned some Mandarin by myself and can speak “broken Mandarin.”
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Chinese are the best in table-tennis due to the large number of players they have in special sport schools and professional teams that do little to no schooling. Kids with “table-tennis talent” are chosen to spend their entire childhood training at special sport schools. Sweden is a country with 10,000 total players, with not many of them professional, in the 1990s. China has way more than that in just full-time professional players. With a much smaller base of players, it is quite incredible that Sweden won the World Team Championships 4 times during the 1989-2000 time period and again the 2021 World Doubles Gold and World Singles Silver. With how many more professional players China has in table-tennis than all the other countries combined, my guess is their top players should be unbeatable. However, their top players are often beaten so is their training or coaching lacking in some way?
