By Jaehoon Kim
Name: Mo Zhang
Sport: Table tennis
Event: Women’s singles
Residence: Italy
Age: 23
Previous Olympics: 2008
Mo Zhang has been on the move just about all her life, but the 23-year-old is hopeful the next stop will be the best stop as she prepares for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
A Chinese-Canadian who moved to Richmond, B.C. in 2003, Zhang took up table tennis at a young age. A local tournament win while playing at the Bridgeport Sports Club led to an invitation to train at the national team training centre in Ottawa.
Zhang moved to the capital when she was 17, but in recent years, Zhang has lived primarily in Germany, and in Italy, to further improve her game.
“Throughout most of the year, I’m in Italy, training,” Zhang highlights, noting the level of competition is higher overseas. “In Europe, there are professional table tennis leagues. There’s none right now in Canada.”
Even though she’s made many friends while training in Italy, Zhang misses living in the Canadian capital.
“I like being in Canada because I get to stay with my family when I’m in Canada,” explains the top-ranked female table tennis player in North America. “I’m used to being away from home because back when I was in China, I was often away from my family, to train in another city and sometimes, I only saw them like once a year. But it is tough.”
Currently, Zhang is training in Zhengzhou, China as she fine-tunes her game for London 2012. About six hours north is where Zhang had her first Olympic experience, as she returned to her homeland representing her new country.
“To be honest, I didn’t play as well as I wanted to,” recalls Zhang, who won her first-round match before bowing out in the second. “It was nice to play in China, but I wish that I would have done a little bit better.”
The only Canadian listed in the world’s top 300, the 171st-ranked player booked her ticket to London by winning the 2011 Pan Am Games gold medal – this despite appendix surgery and inconsistent play leading up to the October event in Mexico.
“I was happy and relieved that I was going to return to the Olympics,” recounts Zhang, who recently tested Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a match when the team was officially unveiled in London. “I wasn’t playing too well before the Pan Am Games, but I knew I had to win this tournament and thankfully, everything turned out well.”
Up against the world’s table tennis superpowers, a run deep into the London tournament would be improbable for Zhang, but she remains confident in her abilities to make some noise at the second Olympics of her young career.
“My goal at the London Olympic Games is to do better than I did in the Beijing Games,” Zhang states. “And long-term, I want to be ranked in the top 50 in the world, as soon as possible.”
Table tennis competition schedule
Men’s singles – July 28-Aug. 2
Women’s singles – July 28-Aug. 1
Men’s team – Aug. 3-8
See london2012.com for more detailed info.