It was the kind of encounter that can only happen at the Olympics: An NBA star and the U.S. women’s table tennis team, engaging in some friendly trash talk.
It was just before the opening ceremony, as hundreds of American athletes mingled together in their Ralph Lauren blazers. The video opens as basketball player Steph Curry has brought a group of women to meet his Team USA basketball teammate Anthony Edwards.
The three women — the 28-year-old Olympic veteran Lily Zhang, and the two newcomers Rachel Sung, 20, and Amy Wang, 21 — are professionals who have played for years at the highest levels of table tennis.
Edwards, the 23-year-old guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, is not. Yet he voiced his confidence that, should they play, he would not be shut out. “Eleven to zero?” he said, incredulously. “I don’t believe it. I’m scoring at least once.”
“There’s only one way to try it out,” Lily Zhang responded.
The interaction went viral on social media
Now, the U.S. table tennis team, a perennial underdog that has never won an Olympic medal, has suddenly found itself in a rare spotlight — one its members hope will help bring longer-term attention and resources to help them achieve that long-awaited goal.
“I have noticed a lot more people actually paying attention to our sport this time around in the Olympics,” said Sung. “A lot of my friends have texted being like, ‘Oh, my God. Like, all my other friends know about this, and they want to watch now, too.’ So I think it’s definitely the step in media that we needed.”
Since the introduction of table tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the sport has been dominated by China. Out of 37 opportunities for a gold medal, Chinese athletes have won 32.
Only 11 other countries have won any medal at all. All of them are in Asia or Europe, where professional leagues and full-time training groups are robust.
By contrast, the U.S. professional league, Major League Table Tennis, began only last year. Table tennis players in the U.S. must train and travel on their own to tournaments overseas, which are crucial to gain experience in high-level international competition.
“It’s tough. It takes away from you focusing on the table and your skills and what you need to do to improve,” Zhang said. “If we had that team around us, I think that medal is not so far-fetched anymore.”
The lack of a strong culture around professional table tennis has a noticeable side effect, they say: the unearned confidence of normal people who believe — mistakenly — that they can compete up with the likes of Zhang, Wang and Sung.
“You wouldn’t go up to Michael Phelps or Simone Biles and be like, ‘Hey, I could beat you in swimming or doing a flip,'” Zhang said. “Because people don’t see professional table tennis, they don’t realize what goes into it.”
It happens often enough that they’ve grown numb to the insult, they said. But occasionally, Wang said, she relents and agrees to a match with her challenger. “Usually it’s sad for them,” she said. “The reality hits, and they know that table tennis is hard.”
All three of the team’s competitors grew up in the U.S. with parents who had immigrated from China and Taiwan, bringing with them a love of the sport.
“My first goal was to beat my parents, then my sister, and then it developed from there,” Zhang recalled. Each can recall when they first beat their most challenging family opponent: eight years old for Wang, 10 years old for Zhang. Sung, whose twin sister was also a competitive player, “took a long time” to reach that milestone. “It was not quick,” she said, laughing.
In Paris, their goals were modest. Zhang, at 28, reached the round of 16 in the singles event, the best Olympic result of her career. Wang and Sung are both newcomers who hope to return to the Olympics; this summer was about gaining experience.
On Tuesday at South Paris Arena, the U.S. women’s team took on Germany, which is historically strong in table tennis, for its opening match. Ultimately, the U.S. lost after battling back from a 2-0 deficit to force a fifth match in the best-of-five series.
The loss stung, of course. Yet it represented the U.S. women’s team’s most competitive showing since 2008 — in the previous three Olympic appearances, the team had exited after a 3-0 loss.
“It is a testament to how far we’ve come as a team, as players,” Zhang said. “I think we can take a lot from the match, even though it’s really disappointing and heartbreaking, it’s just as inspiring and motivating for us.”
