Zhiying Zeng isn’t fussed about travelling to Portugal’s world-class desk tennis coaching facility, the Mirandela Middle, to organize for Paris alongside her Olympic cohorts. “I’d desire to coach right here,” she says, gesturing to her environment in a Santiago de Chile sports activities complicated. The desk tennis corridor is within the basement, and topic to tremors from the group sports activities thundering round above.
Zeng trains right here Monday to Friday, three hours a day. She wish to do extra however she has an excuse as she contemplates her Olympic debut: she’s going to flip 58 simply earlier than the Video games begin in Paris later this month. “Whenever you’re younger, nothing hurts,” she says with a smile. “Now, if I play an excessive amount of I get shoulder ache.”
Zeng’s reluctance to coach in Portugal comes from a love of her residence for 35 years, Chile, the place she will be able to keep near her husband and sons. Her Spanish is peppered with native slang, and he or she regularly jokes with the Chilean self-deprecating sense of humour.
Her Olympic dream started when she was on knowledgeable youth group in Nineteen Seventies China. It wasn’t till this Could that she achieved her purpose by successful a collection of tournaments and ending within the high eight within the Americas area, securing her spot in Paris.
It’s a flip of occasions that even Zeng couldn’t have predicted. She retired from skilled desk tennis in 1986, when she was 20, and he or she now owns a furnishings firm in her residence in Iquique in northern Chile.
The Covid-19 pandemic supplied an sudden path again into desk tennis. To quell her restlessness throughout Chile’s strict lockdown, she purchased a desk tennis desk and performed alone at residence for hours day-after-day. When lockdown lifted, she entered some native tournaments for enjoyable, effortlessly successful all of them. By 2023, she was the highest-ranked girls’s participant within the nation and certified for a spot on Chile’s nationwide group.
“Nobody may imagine it – ‘What are we going to do that with señora?’” she jokes.
As a part of the Chilean girls’s group, she gained first place within the Sudamericanos 2023 and bronze within the 2023 Pan-American Video games. Within the singles, she certified to characterize Chile in Paris.
Zeng’s spectacular sporting story begins in 1966, when she was born in Guangzhou province, to an engineer father and her mom, who was a desk tennis coach. Desk tennis was immensely widespread throughout her youth, particularly following the desk tennis diplomacy of 1971; when the US’ desk tennis group grew to become the primary official American delegation to go to Beijing since 1949. Their go to paved the best way for Richard Nixon’s go to the next yr.
Zeng remembers seeing ping-pong tables “in every single place” as a toddler: “To the Chinese language, desk tennis is like what soccer is to Brazilians.”
Zeng was coached by her mom and her ability was evident from a younger age. When she was 11, Zeng was accepted to a junior elite group at a navy sports activities faculty in Beijing, when Chinese language skilled sports activities have been overseen by the Folks’s Liberation Military. After navy supervision of sports activities led to 1981, the college disbanded and Zeng returned to coach underneath her mom.
By 1983, Zeng was chosen for China’s nationwide desk tennis group and strived to characterize the nation on the largest stage: “It’s each participant’s dream to go to the Olympics”.
However her ambitions have been reduce quick by the introduction of the “two-colour rule” in 1986, which required gamers to make use of bi-colour paddles. This allowed gamers to establish which floor their opponents have been utilizing, and predict the velocity and spin of the ball. The change was merely an excessive amount of for Zeng, who had performed with single-colour paddles since she was a toddler. “The rule killed my sport,” she says. “I felt weak, psychologically and technically.”
She parted methods with the nationwide group and “barely performed” till a Chinese language coach in Chile provided her a job teaching schoolchildren in 1989. The transfer to a far-off, overseas nation appealed: “I wasn’t pondering anymore about being knowledgeable participant, however a coach.”
Zeng took the job and mingled with the small and tight-knit Chinese language neighborhood in northern Chile. There, she was launched to the blossoming import enterprise and ultimately give up teaching in favour of a profession in buying and selling Chinese language items. She grew to become often called “Tania” to Chileans. “In Chile they will’t pronounce my title, they wrestle with the Z … however like all of the Chinese language that come right here, we use a Chilean title,” she says. “So I [chose] Tania.”
Her adolescent son’s online game behavior led her to choose up her bat once more in 2002. Encouraging him to get extra bodily energetic – and put down the video video games – she introduced him to her native desk tennis membership. Her expertise generated a buzz, and earlier than lengthy she performed in a neighborhood event. “I beat everybody” she laughs. “After that, my son solely needed to play desk tennis, and by no means performed video video games once more … his persona modified too, sport offers you confidence to confront issues … I’m very proud that I made that call.”
She by no means thought-about attempting for Chile’s nationwide group, “I had no concept that was even potential”. She as soon as once more retired from desk tennis, and targeted on her enterprise for the following 20 years, till the pandemic introduced her again to the game.
Her coach and buddy, Juan Lizama, says her Olympic potential was obvious when he first noticed her play within the Nineties: “She was extraordinary, the identical stage as immediately. She beat very well-known gamers in South America, and beat them simply,” he says.
Zeng’s sport is defensive; she responds to assaults with totally different “results”; slashing to gradual the ball, or spinning it to disguise course. Lizama says that Zeng is greatest underneath strain, “she’s going to all the time win the tough factors, just like the final in a tied set. She’s calm.”
Lizama calls Zeng a “world instance”. He provides: “She retired from the game for 20 years, and inside a yr, she gained within the Sudamericanos, then the Pan-People, and now she’s going to the Olympics.”
When Chile hosted the Pan-American Video games in 2023, Zeng emerged as a nationwide hero – the oldest athlete in the complete event and a medal winner. She was lovingly dubbed “Tia Tania” by followers and gained greater than 10,000 Instagram followers in every week. Within the crowd at considered one of Chile’s matches, one younger fan advised the press they got here simply to see “the desk tennis grandma”.
Zeng is conscious of her variations in Chile’s sporting panorama, standing out not just for her age but additionally for her immigrant background. But she insists she’s by no means been discriminated towards: “I’ve by no means had issues, and everybody acknowledges my achievements.”
However there was a bitter second in Zeng’s stint as an elite athlete: in February, she didn’t make Chile’s group for the world championships in South Korea, regardless of being the highest-ranking girls’s participant within the nation
Zeng is perplexed as to why she was overlooked however shrugs it off with attribute drive. “In sports activities, nothing is freely given. I’ll simply hold taking part in,” she says.
It’s that unflinching self-belief that has introduced Zeng to Paris 2024, towards so many odds, and he or she’s completely satisfied to be an inspiration.
“At my age, it’s a must to play with happiness, not anguish,” she says, stressing how proud she is to characterize Chile. “I really like this nation. I didn’t attain my dream in China, and I’ve right here. It’s vital not to surrender.”
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