Shanghai Daily news

What happens when Lance Armstrong starts in a yellow jersey, Michael Schumacher blasts off from pole position, or Tiger Woods fires a tee shot, should find a perfect equivalent in this part of the world, courtesy of Chinese paddlers serving up a celluloid ball.
Well, the word "perfect" may not...well be perfect here since Armstrong has decided to retire after this year's Tour de France cycling gala, Schumacher is struggling to pick up from where he left off in Formula One racing last year and Woods is just heaving a sigh of relief after winning his first Major in golf in two-and-a-half years.
Almost all the rest of the sports elite have their troubles now and then, beaten sometimes either by their opponents or by time, but not the Chinese table tennis juggernaut, whose dominance continues from generation to generation, never looking back, except for a few lapses resulting in sporadic medal drains to exceptional foreign rivals.
The just-concluded 48th World Table Tennis Championships in Shanghai saw another clean sweep of top honors by China, adding to its awesome collection of world gold medals, which reached a symbolic 100. It is almost an unspeakable achievement given the fact that the country had not been represented in the championships until the late 50s, more than 30 years after the competition came into existence.
The Shanghai spectacle is the third all-Chinese party in the past decade, after the 1995 championships in Tianjin and the 2001 meet in Osaka, Japan. More formidable is the depth of the Chinese presence at the top level as, in all the five events on offer, Chinese names filled all the final four berths with just three exceptions, namely the German duo of Timo Boll and Christian Suss, who fought their way up to a runner-up finish in the men's doubles, and South Korean Oh Sang-eun and amazing Dane Michael Maze, both blocked out of the men's final by their Chinese opponents.
The blistering Chinese run begs a serious question: what is it that makes them so strong?
Insiders give credit to the backroom staff who devote themselves to analyzing the opponents' games and developing new techniques and strategies. The technicians work out a game pattern for each major foreign paddler, which is in turn followed by training partners whose only job is to emulate different stars around the world.
"We have a lot of Chinese (Vladimir) Samsonovs and (Jan-Ove) Waldners," said Duan Xiang, a member on the technical committee of the Chinese table tennis association. "Our players play against them everyday and that makes the real match day easier."
Indeed, it's everyday literally. The national team training complexes in both Zhengding, Hebei Province and Xiamen, Fujian Province, rarely go idle. China has its own professional table tennis league but the fixtures are fragmented to give way for national trainings.
The longest season of the so-called Chinese Premier Ping Pong League was stretched over one and a half year in 2003, just to facilitate the national paddlers' preparations for major international events, including the Athens Olympic Games.
"In Europe, top players are scattered in different clubs and train with average paddlers," said Wolfgang Paulik of the Austrian Table Tennis Association. "But the Chinese elite hone their skills under the same roof for most of the time and that makes a difference."
And success is not confined to the top cream in a country where an estimated 10 million people play table tennis regularly. The huge following for the sport ensures a mass culture rarely seen elsewhere. The enthusiasm all began in the 50's when the International Table Tennis Federation emerged as one of the first international sports bodies to embrace the new China, fresh off a people's revolution in 1949.
"But to most people at that time, the biggest appeal in table tennis was that it was a cheap and convenient hobby," said Zhou Ling, a 52-year-old table tennis buff.
"Playing ping pong doesn't require an arena as basketball or football does and sometimes people just dismantled their door panel to put up a makeshift table. The net? You just need two bricks and put a stick in between."
Well, most success stories have humble beginnings. And China's has endured.