Who is Zhiying Zeng? All you need 58-year-old Olympian at Paris 2024

Zhiying Zeng was eliminated in the preliminary round at the Paris Olympics 2024

Chile have taken a pretty healthy 48-person contingent to the 2024 Paris Olympics, but their most unique representative was table tennis paddler Zhiying Zeng. The 58-year-old paddler became one of the oldest athletes to ever compete in the Olympics and the eldest one from Chile.

Even though she was eliminated in the preliminary round by Lebanese paddler Mariana Sahakian, who is twelve years younger than her, Zeng’s story serves as an example showing that age is just a number in sports. Thanks to her determination to get to the Olympics at this age, more sportspersons will gain motivation to continue pushing on to achieve their dreams, even though it might take longer than expected.

Zeng has a unique life story and has gone through ups and downs all through her journey to the Olympics. Here are five interesting facts about the 58-year-old Olympian.

5. She adopted a new name after moving to Chile

Zhiying Zeng decided to move to Arica, a region in Northern Chile, in 1989 at the age of 23 to help teach the sport of table tennis to aspiring children in the country. She decided to adopt a new name that could help her feel more at home in the South American country after her bold move out of Asia. Zeng decided to adopt the name ‘Tania’.

Zeng got married in Chile and soon after moved to the city of Iquique, which is also in northern Chile. It was in that region that Zeng opted to continue teaching aspirants with the name of ‘Tania’ and continued her pursuit of representing the South American country at the highest stages.

4. Zeng comes from a table tennis background and is a national youth champion

Before moving to Chile in 1989, Zeng was keen to make it big in the sport of table tennis in China. She was inspired by her mother, who was a local table tennis coach, and she passed on the love of the game to her daughter. Zeng trained under his mother until the age of nine, after which she was enrolled in a new school that had a table tennis coach who helped elevate her game.

Zeng was pretty dominant at the youth level in the highly competitive table tennis scene in China, becoming a junior national champion and winning many tournaments. However, before the game was adapted to the Olympics (1988), Zeng was badly impacted by the ‘two color rule’ which meant that the paddle had to be different colors on both sides than just black.

Zeng would confuse her opponent by regularly rotating the ball using the all-black paddle, but she couldn’t do that with the new rule. As a result, her dominant form in the youth scene started to dwindle, and she had to move away from the sport in the country.

3. She was a former teammate of another veteran Chinese paddler, Ni Xialing

Zeng’s heroics at the youth level in competitive table tennis in China in the 1980s earned her a place with the China national table tennis team. It was during that period that she was able to link up with acclaimed China-born paddler 61-year-old Ni Xialing, who rose as high as No. 6 in the world rankings in 1985.

Xialing has had a much more decorated professional career and continued her journey even after Zeng decided to step away from the professional game in the late 80s’.

Xialing won two gold medals representing China in the 1983 World Table Tennis Championships and has been representing Luxembourg since 1991. Xialing is representing Luxembourg in the women’s table tennis category at the Paris Olympics and was among their flag bearers. Zeng was able to reunite with her former China national teammate in Paris and share a sweet moment, with both going strong despite their ages.

2. Zeng’s son rekindled her spirit for competitive Table Tennis

After moving to Chile in 1989, Zeng was quite content with being a table tennis teacher and ended her playing career once and for all. She settled with her family and was happily teaching the sport until about 2003, when her son helped fire up her spirit for the sport again. Zeng has revealed that to help her child, who was 13 at the time, get into sporting activity, she started competing in regional tournaments in Chile.

She wanted to teach him the game to get him out of a video game addiction and to stop him from watching too much television. Interestingly, Zeng won two national table tennis championships in Chile in 2004 and 2005 but stopped playing at a competitive level after that as a quality coach was able to teach her son instead.

1. The COVID-19 pandemic played a huge role in helping Zeng achieve her Olympic dream

After leaving the game professionally in 2005, Zeng went back to her job of being a teacher. She also started her own furniture business in Iquique But then everything changed after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. With the restrictions and lockdowns stopping her from going out to teach children, Zeng decided to pick up the paddle and start training on her own.

Once the situation improved, she decided to contact the Chilean Federation to participate in regional tournaments. She started winning them, mostly against male paddlers, after which she qualified to represent Chile in the 2023 South American Table Tennis Championship.

But the biggest motivational factor for Zeng was at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, when she participated in the Women’s Team category. Zeng’s team returned from losing the first two sets in their opening match to pull off a brilliant comeback. After getting the nickname ‘Tia Tania’ (Auntie Tania), Zeng helped inspire her team to win a bronze medal in the women’s team category.

That gave her the motivation she needed to keep pushing on and claiming a place in the Chile Olympics team. Even though she lost in her first Olympics game, the fact that the 58-year-old came to this stage after leaving the sport for decades is an inspired tale of how talent never dies in a sportsperson.

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