Deng Yaping is now 35 years of age, but once dominated table tennis and won 18 world champion titles and four Olympic gold medals during her sporting career. She has so far been the only women’s single player to win Olympic gold medals in table tennis in two consecutive games.

Now she has another role. As it were she is the mayor of the Olympic Village. In January 2007, Deng Yaping was appointed Deputy Director of the Olympic Village Department by BOCOG and she is often referred to as the ‘village head.’

Deng Yaping said, ‘The difficulty of managing the Olympic Village well and winning an Olympic title is roughly the same.’

She explained that both missions require a strong sense of responsibility and leave little room for any mistake. She said, ‘The Olympic Village Department has to work as a team in managing the Olympic Village.’

Deng believes that her experience of living in several Olympic Villages has provided her with good experience for her current job. She said, ‘Being an athlete for many years, I know exactly what kind of Olympic Village an athlete needs. When I worked as a member of the Athletes’ Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), we had to take turns to be stationed at the Olympic Village during the Olympic Games. I spent a great deal of time at different Olympic Village during that period.

‘The Olympic Village should be first and foremost a home for the athletes.’

To ensure that athletes give their best performances at the Beijing Games, village administrators should make them feel at home with the most considerate service. When receiving visiting officials from Olympic committees of other countries and regions, she always asks for their suggestions to improve the operation of the Beijing Olympic Village.
Deng said facilities in the Beijing Olympic Village will not be significantly different from those of previous Olympic Games since it has to meet IOC standards. Decoration of the Beijing Olympic Village, according to Deng, will not be luxurious but will include elements of Chinese culture.

After she retired from sport in 1997 she went to Tsinghua University to study for a Bachelor’s degree in the English language. Once she had her degree she was admitted by the Business School of the University of Nottingham in Britain for her Master’s degree. Then she went on to get her doctorate in economics at Cambridge University.

It is difficult to think of anyone better qualified or more appropriate to run the Olympics village.
Source: Beijng Review

If China’s team does not walk away with all the honors in the table tennis at the Olympic Games then there will be a lot of surprise and disappointment.

Now Zhang Yining, the reigning Olympic champion, has qualified for the Beijing Games despite losing her number one table tennis ranking for the first time in five years.

The top five women in the rankings released by the sport’s ruling body were all Chinese and so were the top four men, but only the top two gain automatic qualification.

Guo Yue, the 19-year-old new number one, is the other automatic Chinese qualifier in the women’s singles.

Wang Hao and Ma Lin qualify directly from the men’s rankings, meaning Wang Liqin, the reigning world champion, must try to take the third and last Chinese spot at the Olympics by way of the Asian qualifying event. The surprise men’s singles gold medallist from the 2004 Games, Ryu Seung Min of South Korea, has qualified although ranked eighth in the world. Timo Boll of Germany is the highest-ranked non-Chinese player at five.

The top 20 in January’s rankings automatically qualify for the Beijing Games in August.

Because of the large number of Chinese in the rankings and to make it look more like an international contest Zoran Primorac of Croatia, ranked 23rd, has qualified for his sixth Games.

Sweden’s Joergen Persson and Belgium’s Jean-Michel Saive who have competed in every Games since table tennis was introduced to the Olympics in 1988, are tied in the final qualification position in the men’s singles. They will stage a play-off for automatic qualification before the European qualifying tournament in April.

China is not looking to win the medal race at the Beijing Olympics. China came second to the United States in the gold medal standings in Athens in 2004 so it is possible, even probable, it could win the title as the world’s greatest sports power at its own Olympic Games.

But Sports Minister Liu Peng, a top Communist Party official, said a much more important measure of the success of the Beijing Games was whether they were well organized and other competing nations went away happy.

Liu Peng said, ‘We have never said that we will top the medal table in gold medals or in all medals at the Beijing Games. We have never set any targets like these. Gold medals are not the most important thing for the host nation. The most important thing is to make the 2008 Games a success and to make all the delegates from around the world satisfied.’

On the other hand failure in, for example, table tennis, would be considered not quite the article. Wang Nan and Zhang Yining, — both multiple world and Olympic champions — had no doubt that the country’s world supremacy would go unchallenged in their sport.

Wang said, ‘We are expecting to win. Coming second is failure for us and the team. As long as we don’t mess up ourselves, we’ll be okay, because nobody can beat us.’

Our picture shows Wang Nan and Zhang Yining as women’s doubles winners trophy at the world table tennis championships in Zagreb May 27, 2007. But South Korea has some amazing players who will be there fighting for a medal. Should be very interesting.

Ticket sales for the 2008 Olympic Games have received an overwhelming response. Some events, including the opening and closing ceremonies are already over-subscribed.

Rong Jun, head of the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, said, ‘With just 10 days until the first phase of sales ends, we have received 360,000 orders for more than 2.2 million tickets. The opening and closing ceremonies were extremely over-subscribed and a random computerized selection process will be used to allocate the tickets.’ He said it was difficult to predict the odds because more orders are expected in the coming ten days.

Tickets to a dozen of sports including badminton, table tennis, swimming, diving, gymnastics and basketball are also very much in demand.

Rong Jun said, ‘On the whole, we are very satisfied with the situation. After all, Chinese people are not used to buying tickets more than a year in advance.’

In the first phase of ticket sales, people can wait until June 30 to place their orders and tickets will be assigned between July and August. The second leg of domestic sales will start in October and run through December.
Source: China Daily

China has absolute domination of the world of table tennis. The suggestion has been made that some effort should be made to bring other countries up to standard so that in the Olympic Games table tennis does not become a total China benefit.

The photograph here is of China’s world No.2 Wang Liqin celebrating after beating teammate Ma Lin to claim his third singles world title at the World table tennis championships in Zagreb on May 27 this year. China claimed a clean sweep of gold and silver medals for the third time.

Cai Zhenhua, vice director of China’s sports administration, said, ‘The Chinese table tennis team has reached a new golden age. In order to improve the attractiveness of the sport, however, there should be changes to the rules as well as more care taken about the development — to empower more and more countries and regions in this sport.

‘China should not only lead the development of skill and techniques but also make efforts in . . . training coaches and players for the backward countries and providing them with infrastructure.’
Source: China Daily