Feng Tian Wei managed to make it to the semi-finals of the
Table Tennis yesterday, facing off Ding Nang. The match was telecast “live” 11
pm yesterday. By that time, my eyes were already closing and when I saw Feng
losing two matches, one after another to Ding, I simply switched off my
television set and headed to slumberland. I knew that Feng Tian Wei would lose to
this world No. 1 player and she did so when I checked the result this morning!
At every table tennis match in major leagues like the
Olympic, I always see new players from the China team. And not only are they new players, they are
powerful players in the world! On the other hand, at every such important
match, I will still see the same old Singapore table tennis players play, each
time, older than before, and each time, less active, less flexible and less
powerful towards their rival .
I am sure in the next major table tennis league, another new
player, another new No.1 will succeed Ding Nang: the pipeline of great
world-class players is being churned out continuously by China while in
Singapore, beside these few players which we think are very powerful, there
seems not many other good world-class players.
Anyway, the training environment here in my opinion will
never be that close to the exacting standard in China. China has so many good
players for each of their teams to mould into even better players with every
training session.