Olympic Journalist Proves Feeble Foe for YOG Table Tennis Medalist

(ATR) The best you can ask when you face an Olympic athlete at their sport is a polite destruction.

Right before United States table tennis player Lily Zhang and I faced one another on Wednesday morning, she had walked off the arena floor at Wutaishan Sports Centre a winner. After defeating Miyu Kato of Japan to take the bronze medal at the Youth Olympic Games, she told reporters, "I feel like I’m floating."

For Kato, who grew visibly more agitated with each misstep as the match slipped away, the dam burst afterward. The 15-year old walked out sobbing and unable to immediately speak with the media.

Kato may be the fifth-ranked under-18 women’s player in the world, according to the International Table Tennis Federation, but the disappointment is understandable. The Youth Olympics Games are the biggest stage she has seen.

Zhang, on the other hand, feels comfortable in the Nanjing Olympic Village, maybe even a bit like an elder stateswoman. The daughter of Chinese immigrants was the youngest member of the Olympic table tennis field at the 2012 London Olympics, which began a month after she turned 16, just old enough to get a U.S. driver’s license.

When the now-18-year old returns to the U.S., she will check off another milestone by starting school at the University of California, Berkeley. With a Youth Olympic Games medal in tow, even the sudden autonomy of college life doesn’t seem so daunting.

Neither, unfortunately, does the prospect of playing her sport against a journalist.

Not that it went exactly as expected. I had envisioned the first serve spinning off Zhang’s paddle, slicing across the table around the speed at which movement stops being visible to the human eye, and cracking off the barrier behind me before I crooked my elbow to consider a return.

Instead, it seems hittable. It’s quick but no lightning bolt. My eyes light up. "Hey, I’ve got a shot here."

The serve turns out to be hittable in the sense that I can put my paddle in the vicinity of the ball and hear the soft plink as it heads the other way. In this case, the other way is closer to the waist-high blue barriers that divide the practice courts than to the actual table.

What’s tough to reckon with, what doesn’t show up as well on live television, is the spin that gives the ball a new angle with each bounce off the table.

Even if I were skilled enough to handle the spin, which is several standard deviations beyond your cousin’s one nasty shot that dominates holiday get-togethers, a world-ranked player like Zhang knows the few spots on the table where her serve can be returned.

As I try to adjust, with as much success as a porcupine tossed into an ocean, I make conversation with Zhang. She’s enjoyed the opportunities to meet other athletes at the YOG, which is less intimidating than her time as a youngster in London. She’s the only Olympic women’s table tennis player entered in Nanjing 2014.

The Youth Games have given her an opportunity to get her family together. After her win, Zhang waved to a group of supporters in the stands that included grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Her parents don’t usually attend her matches, but they have for her two appearances at Olympic events. I asked her if they get nervous for her.

"They won’t admit it," she said, "but I think so."

She says she was never pressured to take up the sport, but started playing casually at age seven, fared well at a youth tournament despite little training, and things took off from there.

I did score one point. One.

I took a stab – probably more of a flail – at a typically vicious serve, lifting a high looping shot back toward her side. On its way down, it nicked the edge of the tabletop, shooting it laterally away from Zhang. It was as fluky as they come, but it’ll sound like a whirling, leaping smash to the grandkids someday.

A few minutes later, Zhang left for lunch with a smile and a handshake, each more polite than her forehand.

Written by Nick Devlin

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