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Thursday, August 21, 2008

One Quarter of Beijing Olympics Table Tennis Players Are China Born

Few days ago, I voiced my displeasure against using foreign talent to represent a foreign country in a sports event. ALL paddlers representing Singapore in this year's Olympics are from China. This trend is being seen in many other countries e.g. United States, Germany, Australia, e.t.c. It is an interesting phenomenon.

From Red Sports, 25% of all table tennis players at Beijing Olympics are from China but are representing their new country. Some like Gao Jun, who won silver for China in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics, emigrated to the USA and am now playing for USA.

Currently, all table tennis players who got into the women's semi finals at Beijing Olympics are born in China (3 representing China and 1 for Singapore). One thing I am certain is no matter what, all of these medalists (gold, silver or bronze) will be able to understand the China's national anthem should China win eventually.

Women (29 China-born athletes out of 78 singles players or 37%)

Australia
Lay Jian Fang
Miao Miao
Sang Stephanie Xu

Austria
Liu Jia
Li Qiangbing

Canada
Zhang Mo
Judy Long

Congo
Yang Fen

Dominican Republic
Qian Lian
Wu Xue

France
Xian Yi Fang

Germany
Wu Jiaduo

Italy
Tan Monfardini Wenling

Korea
Dang Ye Seo

Luxembourg
Ni Xia Lian

Netherlands
Li Jie
Li Jiao

Poland
Li Qian
Xu Jie

Singapore
Feng Tianwei
Li Jia Wei
Wang Yue Gu

Spain
Shen Yanfei
Zhu Fang

Turkey
Hu Melek

United States
Wang Chen
Gao Jun
Jacqueline Lee
Crystal Wang

Men (11 China-born athletes out of 77 singles players or 14%)

Argentina
Liu Song

Austria
Chen Weixing

Canada
Zhang Peng

Croatia
Tan Ruiwu

Dominican Republic
Lin Ju

Singapore
Gao Ning
Yang Zi

Spain
He Zhi Wen

Turkey
Zeng Cem

Ukraine
Kou Lei

United States
David Zhuang

The Chinese sporting diaspora: one-quarter of all table tennis players at Beijing Olympics are from China
http://redsports.sg/2008/08/16/china-diaspora-table-tennis/

4 comments:

  1. Win silver still need to give back to the Sports Council! Wa piang eh

    ReplyDelete
  2. thank you for this piece of info!
    it is now very clear that our desperate govt purchased the silver and we the citizens are suppose to rejoice. may i suggest we purchase the nobel prize as well. lol

    ReplyDelete
  3. Li Jiawei loses bronze medal match to fellow Chinese compatriot but I must day Li effort is commendable having fought back to draw 2-2 after losing first 2 games. China's Gao Yue better footwork and consistency gave her the upper hand. Gao Yue is still very young at just 20 if I am not wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I realized I made an error. The China's player is Guo Yue instead of Gao Yue.

    hongjun

    ReplyDelete

Do provide your constructive comment. I appreciate that.

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