Paris Olympics 2024: 'Dream came true,' says 58-year-old Chinese table tennis debutant after loss

Table tennis player Zeng Zhiying said her "dream came true" Saturday after making her Olympic debut at age 58, despite suffering defeat for her adopted Chile.

Zeng represented China, the country of her birth, as a young player but retired at 20 and moved to Chile, where she has lived for the past 35 years. 

Playing in front of a full house and with extra support from a small but noisy group of Chilean fans, Zeng said the experience had been a rewarding one. "I gave my best in every competition and that's how I managed to get here."

In 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square tragedy, table tennis player Zeng Zhiying departed from China to teach the game in northern Chile. After 35 years, at the age of 58, she will compete in the Olympic Games as Tania, the name she took on while living in the South American country.

Tania Zeng gave up table tennis a long time ago. She rose to fame in Chile after placing third at the Pan American Games in Santiago last year. Despite the fact that the sport took her to Chile, she gave it up to focus more of her time on the company she founded and, eventually, raising a family. During the epidemic, her goal of being a professional athlete reappeared. Paris will be the apex of her achievements.

“I never imagined (making it to the Olympic Games) because I took it up for entertainment, to do some sport,” Zeng said in an interview with The Associated Press at the country’s Olympic training center. “I gained confidence by playing a lot. Since I always won, I liked playing more and more.

“Qualifying for an Olympics is a big, gigantic dream, and being able to fulfill it at that age is a huge happiness,” said Zeng, the oldest athlete in her country’s delegation.

Born in Foshan, in southern China, Zeng is the daughter of a local table tennis coach. As a child, she used to follow her mother to professional table tennis training sessions. For a decade, the Chinese-Chilean athlete was a high-performance player.

At the age of 11, she joined the Beijing Military Sports School. Six years later, she was selected for the national team. Like her partners, she dreamed of Olympic medals. But between the extreme fierceness of the competition and the pace of training, the young woman failed to earn her place in China's elite, and finally gave up in 1986.

Before she had reached her teens, Zeng had moved to Beijing and an elite sports school. By her late teens, she was a Chinese national player, and seen as an Olympic prospect.

By training three hours a day, five times a week, she regained her lost reflexes, amazed the South American table tennis players and succeeded in her challenge.