Published : 25/07/2024
Ouvrons Grand les Jeux, Games wide open！
The highly anticipated Paris Olympics will be held from July 26 to August 11. China National teams and Hong Kong athletes are all ready for the game.
The "Our China Story" website has specially launched a Paris Olympics special series, capturing every splendid moment and sharing interesting stories of it.
This article tells the story of Sun Yingsha (孫穎莎), the star athlete of Chinese women's table tennis national team.
Born in the post-2000s, Sun has already become the world's leading female table tennis player, but she has higher ambitions, and the Paris Olympics in 2024 will be the stage for her to showcase her strength.
Sun Yingsha showed talent for table tennis at 5
Sun Yingsha was born in 2000 in an ordinary civil servant family in Shijiazhuang, Hebei. At 5, she was taken by her mother to a primary school's table tennis centre to learn to play.
Her mother's initial idea was just encouraging her daughter to get more exercise. Unexpectedly, the little girl fell in love with table tennis as soon as she got to know it.
She looked forward to training every day; after returning home, she would think about the techniques she had just learned and even play against the wall while on the bed until she fell asleep.
In the eyes of coach, the proactive girl was obviously a good student who needed not much push from others.
What's more, she was notably quick-witted. She could pick up new moves by just watching others do them once, which of course led her to rapid progress. Not to mention that she was such an adorable and lively girl.
It wasn't long before Sun Yingsha became one of the top players in the centre, and she was almost unbeatable for other boys and girls.
Sun Yingsha sees Zhang Yining as her idol
Due to her outstanding performance, Sun Yingsha was selected for the Hebei provincial team at the age of 10, stepping on the path of a professional athlete.
At that stage, she gained herself an nickname not of her age —"Old Sun" (老孫), as the coach found that she always contemplated calmly before serving and competing, demonstrating a maturity beyond her years.
Upon entering the provincial team, Sun started dreaming about becoming a champion. Her idol was the nearly invincible "Big Devil" Zhang Yining (張怡寧) in her prime, and she hoped to grow up to become a world and Olympic champion like Zhang.
Years later, Sun Yingsha mentioned another motivation she had at that time, which was to see the players on the national team in person.
"And I was very envious of their uniforms with the national flag and their own names. At that time, I wanted to go to Beijing, to the national team, to see these idols, to wear uniforms with names and national flags," recalled Sun.
Sun Yingsha managed to achieve her goal of joining the national team fairly quickly. In 2015, when she was 15 years old, she won the National Youth Championships Women's Singles, making it a natural step for her to become a member of the national team.
Sun Yingsha won international championship at 16
By 2017, Sun Yingsha, not yet 17 years old, won her first women's singles title at the Japan Open by defeating her senior teammate, Chen Meng (陳夢), becoming the first player from the post-2000s generation to win an international championship in table tennis for China, causing a sensation.
Since then, Sun Yingsha, with her talent and effort, has propelled her professional career forward, and she has achieved good results in many important competitions.
At the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, she and her teammates won the gold medal for the women's team. Although she lost to Chen Meng in the women's singles and only won a silver medal, it was already a remarkable achievement for a young athlete born after 2000.
During this period, Sun Yingsha, who is calm in competition and has a strong style of play, got a new nickname — the "Little Devil".
However, she is "not satisfied" with this nickname. She once said that she hopes to become a "Big Devil" like her idol Zhang Yining, "Yining is the Big Devil, and I also very much hope that one day I can transform into a 'Big Devil'."
Single Grand Slam - Sun Yingsha only lacks one Olympic gold
Heading into the Paris Olympics cycle, her performance and achievements continue to surge: In January 2022, she topped the world rankings for the first time, becoming the first paddler born after 2000 to be ranked World No. 1.
In 2023, she won the Women's Singles Championship at the World Championships, and in 2024, she claimed the Women's Singles World Cup. By this point, of the three Grand Slam women's singles titles, Sun Yingsha is only missing the Olympic title.
At the Paris Olympics, Sun Yingsha is China's top-ranked player in women's singles and will compete in women's teams and doubles events.
Will she manage to complete the "Grand Slam" and evolve into an invincible "Big Devil" on the Paris court? Let's wait and see.
Read more: Paris Olympics｜Can Fan Zhendong fulfil the "Grand Slam" dream?