Who is Zhiying Zeng? - An inspiring journey of Zhiying Zeng, 52-year-old to qualify for Paris Olympics

Zhiying Zeng's mother who is 92-year-old was awake till 5 a.m. in the morning to see her daughter who is 58-year-old to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics. It was a long-awaited dream of her which she saw when she was a little girl. Zhiying Zeng was born in 1966 in Guangzhou, China.

Zhiying Zeng was brought up in a table tennis family. Her mother was a table coach and until 9 years of age, she was under her guidance.  She advanced fast through the ranks, taking first place in many regional competitions before winning the junior national championship. Zeng played for the Chinese national team when he was sixteen years old. She declared an early retirement from the sport because a regulation change revealed her inadequacies, therefore her ambition of competing on the Olympic stage was dashed.

The "two-colour rule" set before to the 1988 Seoul Olympics required that the two sides of the paddle be different hues rather than black. This was a big obstacle for Zeng, who frequently rotated the paddle to mislead her opponents. Different hues meant she wouldn't be as unexpected.

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“So many players in China have the dream [to represent the country] because it’s so hard to achieve. The change of rules affected my game a lot,” she told CNN. “That’s when I had a big downturn and left the national team,” as per Hindustani Times.

In 1989 school in Chile gave her an offer to become a table tennis coach which changed her life. In 2004 and 2005 Zeng won two national-level tournaments but had to stop her journey because her son started to play. When the COVID-19 virus hit the world Zhiying Zeng started her table tennis practice again which kept her healthy and she started to love sports again.

Zhiying Zeng rose to fame in 2023

She started participating in regional competitions with the support of the Iquique, Chile, federation where she currently resides. After convincing her friends and family, she then made it to the 2023 South American Table Tennis Championships at the age of 57. She also rose to fame in Chile at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, earning her a spot to compete for her nation in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

However, during the preliminary rounds in the Paris 2024 Olympics she lost to Mariana Sahakian of Lebanon. But her story will be remembered lifelong.