OLYMPICS /
Team China
Wang Nan's withdrawal raises retirement speculation
Updated: 2008-08-02 21:44
Li Xiaoxia [Xinhua] |
Dubbed "Smiling Assasin" as she always smiles on and off the court, Wang gives the false impression that she is not fierce and hard-hitting in her strokes. The fact that she has won almost everything in table tennis world, however rules it wrong.
"Who knows? Maybe I'll play the 49th world championships." That's the answer two years ago for the question about her retirement after Wang led the Chinese national women's team to a clean sweep in the Doha Asian Games.
She had answered quite the same after the Busan Asian Games in 2002, when the leader to world table tennis reached her lowest ebb, losing in both the women's singles and doubles, as well as two crucial games in China's incredible and humiliating 3-1 final defeat to DPR Korea.
But Wang steeled herself after a string of defeats, rebounding to win all in Paris with the gold medals from the women's singles, the women's doubles and the mixed doubles.
Then in 2004 and 2006, she twice led the Chinese women's team to the Corbillon Cup in the 47th and 48th world team championships.
Will Wang retire after the Beijing Games? Or may she again suprise the world to continue as a long living legend like Swede Jan-Ove Waldner? Who knows?
