Picture Credit: X
The 2024 Olympics, currently undergoing in the French capital, Paris, has given some awe-striking moments to sports fans ever since its beginning. Sports fans across the globe had one such moment recently when table tennis player Zeng Zhiying made her debut at the age of 58. Zhiying said her ‘dream came true’ when she represented her adopted country Chile, even though she suffered a defeat there. Zeng was born in 1966 in Guangzhou, China, and got coaching from her mother till the age of 9.
In no time, Zeng became a junior national champion and remained a high-performance athlete for a decade. However, the sports’ switch to two-sided paddles disrupted her game and she couldn’t make it to the team. This development came as a huge setback for Zeng and she retired from the sport at just 20 years of age. Things again took a turn for her in 1989 when she accepted an invitation to teach the sport to athletes in Africa.
She married soon and moved to Iquique in northern Chile but later stopped playing and decided to dedicate time to her business and eventually starting a family. Zeng did not touch a table tennis bat for decades until she started playing again during the pandemic and rose through the ranks and went on to become one of the best players in South America.
Zeng made her Olympics 2024 debut under the name Tania, and told The Associated Press, “I never imagined (making it to the Olympic Games) because I took it up for entertainment, to do some sport. I gained confidence by playing a lot. Since I always won, I liked playing more and more."
Tania Zeng gets accompanied by 92-year-old father at Paris Olympics 2024
The 58-year-old was accompanied by her 92-year-old father at the Paris Olympics 2024. She played Lebanon’s Mariana Sahakian in the preliminary round of Paris 2024. Recalling her time as a professional in China, she said, “I lived like that when I was 15. It had been a long time since I experienced something like this. I was like an excited teenager again. I forgot I was 56!”
Speaking about her dream of being an Olympian, Zeng said, “It was the biggest dream of my life. Even when I was a little girl and they would ask me what my dream was, I would say: ‘Become an Olympian.’”
