U.S. table tennis: Who says you can't go home again?

BEIJING -- All four members of the U.S. table tennis team are from China, so there figures to be some mixed emotions when the Olympic competition begins next week.

"I have Chinese and American fans cheering for me," said women's team member Gao Jun, a silver medalist for China in the 1992 Barcelona Games. "I grew up here. I lived in Beijing for eight years. I feel so happy I can play here."

Just don't expect the Americans to enjoy any kind of homecourt advantage. No country plays table tennis as well as China, which has won the last four men's world team championships and 16 titles overall. The 17-time champion women's team has lost just one world championship since 1975.

Which is one reason many teams, not just the Americans, will have native Chinese competing here. And U.S. coach Teodor Gheorghe, an immigrant himself from Romania, says his players' background will help them cope with the rabid following table tennis has in China.

"They are not afraid. They are really excited," he said. "Everybody wants to play in their country. We've played against Chinese teams. We played against Chinese players.

"Yeah, the crowd was cheering for China. [But] they are experienced players. They know had to handle this."

Yet, the Beijing competition will be unlike any other Olympic table tennis event because while the sport was seen as something of a curiosity in places such as Athens and Atlanta, it's the national sport in China.

"It's a little bit overwhelming," Gheorghe said of his players' reaction. "It's a good feeling. It's not a bad feeling. It makes them happy. They feel good. They feel important. Like we didn't waste our life playing this sport. [It's] a dream come true.

"Everybody was very glad when China won the [Olympic bid]. We hope that all this will really promote table tennis all over the world."

To compete for a U.S. Olympic team, foreign-born athletes must become naturalized citizens, a process everyone on the table tennis team has completed. But some parts of that process have apparently been easier to complete then others.

"When I'm in the U.S. I miss China. When I'm in China I miss the U.S.," admitted Gao who, like teammate Chen Wang, still lives in China. "But one thing I don’t miss is American food. I'm eating only Chinese food."

-- Kevin Baxter and Barbara Demick

Photo: Nan Li, left, returns the ball to Whitney Ping during a round-robin tournament in the table tennis trials for the U.S. Olympic team in January. Li won the match. Credit: Matt Rourke / Associated Press

For starters, it's not 'Ping Pong'

The first thing you learn from table tennis players is that you do NOT call it ping-pong. It is table tennis.

My interest in table tennis started when I left high school. My parents celebrated by purchasing a ping-pong table. (Do you call it a table tennis table?) Anyway, my two younger brothers quickly became experts. When I returned from college on holidays I was soundly humiliated at the hand-held paddle of my younger siblings.

My interest continued to develop. My skills never did.

Fast forward to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, my first. A friend went on and on after watching the table tennis. “It was incredible!” he raved, “The most amazing thing I have EVER seen!”

The Olympic scheduler always has table tennis competing at the same time as swimming. While I was focused on winning a bunch of swimming medals I was missing out on the most incredible, amazing thing. You might think I’m joking, but my mind would always create ways to sneak in to see the table tennis in between the prelims and semi-finals and finals that my swimming required.

Alas, my commitment to swimming never allowed me to stray from the pool.

“It was unbelievable, as I recall,” was all my brothers offered after attending the medal rounds of table tennis at the Sydney 2000 Games. They both both nodded and smiled.

It was especially hard in Athens. The U.S. swim team stayed in the same building as the table tennis team. I was in a room right over one of the U.S. table tennis stars! We would depart in the morning, heading in different directions, and I would long to get on the other bus heading to the table tennis venue.

We were waiting for our buses one morning, and I boasted that I was aware, well aware, that the sport is NEVER referred to as ping-pong. It’s table tennis. They nodded in agreement. Then took a step back.

In Beijing I will get to watch, live and in-person, that most incredible, amazing, unbelievable thing called Olympic table tennis.

I’m really looking forward to it!

It was a year after the 2004 Athens Olympics, and I was sitting in my friend’s apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan. It was a beautiful day. My friend, who had just purchased a new set of table tennis paddles, said “I’m going to call my friend, and when he gets here, we’ll go down to the park and play some ping-, uh, sorry, table tennis.”

His friend is a somewhat famous writer for Rolling Stone. He showed up, we had a beer and talked some small talk. Then, as we were leaving, I asked him, “So, are you any good at table tennis?”

He turned to me, looked me square in the eyes, and with a straight face said “Table tennis is the one thing in life I do really, really well.”

I had just met him, so I didn’t know if he was joking or not. It turns out he wasn’t.

For years I kept thinking about what he had said. Wouldn’t it be great if all of us knew the one thing in life that we were really, really great at?

-- Gary Hall Jr.

Photo: George Braithwaite of the United States volleys with China's Laing Geliang during a table tennis match on June 12 at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda -- 37 years after the two men participated in a week of table tennis exhibition games in China. Credit: Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times

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