BEIJING - China's former Olympic and world champion Kong Linghui was
appointed assistant coach for the women's national table tennis team on Sunday,
three days after he announced his retirement from the sport.
Kong Linghui of China returns a shot
in the men's singles round three match against Zoltan Fejer-Konnerth of
Germany at the 48th World Table Tennis Championships in Shanghai in this
May 3, 2005 file photo. China's sport officials are wondering how to
punish Olympic table tennis gold medallist Kong who was held by police for
drink-driving after crashing his Porsche into a taxi, Chinese media
reported on July 24, 2006. [Reuters] |
"I had thought of the possibility of being named to coach the women's
national team," Kong said after learning his appointment.
"No one had told me that before Liu Fengyan, the director of the Table Tennis
& Badminton Administrative Center, announced it this morning.
"It's not a surprise for me. After all, the chances of coaching the men's
team and the women's are equal," he added.
Liu believed that Kong's role in the women's team offers an opportunity for
the "rookie" to get more adapted to the coaching job.
"Kong had done a good job in assisting Liu Guoliang, the head coach of
Chinese men's national team, before he formally retired as a table tennis player
last Thursday," said Liu.
"He has accumulated kinds of experience from it and is more experienced than
his former teammate Yan Sen, who was named assistant coach of the women's
reserve team. That's why we gave Kong a job on the national team, while Yan a
post in the reserve team.
"But Kong has few understandings about the girl paddlers and no experience in
coaching girls and communicating with them in training, so we want him to get
familiar with the new post first before assigning some real tasks to him," he
added.
Liu's concerns got echoed by Kong himself. He said: "Coaching women paddlers
is complete new job for me since the girls think different, play different and
say in different styles with men paddlers. I have to work hard into my new
post."
The "Prince of Table Tennis", who will turn 31 on Wednesday, had played his
last competitive match in the Chinese national championships in Wuxi, where the
native of Heilongjiang province lost his first match of the event representing
his home town and decided to retire after find no enough energy to carry on
hisbrilliant career.
"Frankly speaking, I can't live without playing table tennis. It is an
anguishing decision to quit. I had planned to play until after the 2008
Olympics, but it now seems unrealistic," said Kong when announcing his
retirement.
He said he would take up a coaching role in the Chinese national team.
"As a player, I am not in my prime any longer, so I hope to continue to make
contributions to my motherland by taking up a coaching role," Kong said.
Hints have speaked out of itself, however, as the former star paddler deeply
ruined his public image in the mid of last summer when Kong slammed his Porche
to a cab and been charged with drunken driving.
Kong was arrested but narrowly escaped a detainment after his navy-blue
Porche Boxster-s clashed with a taxi on July 21 with no casualty was caused in
the accident, and he later made a public apology while paying 1800 yuan RMB
penalty with his driving licence suspended for six months.
"As a member of the Chinese table tennis national team, I've gotten widely
concerned of and supported by many, and should have taken the responsiblity of
setting a good example for youngsters after receiving so many honors in my
career.
"I feel really sorry to this errancy. I sincerely apologise to everybody," he
said in a statement to say sorry for the traffic accident.
The table tennis great began his athletic career at age six. He made the
Heilongjiang provincial team in 1986 before he went on to make the national team
1991.
Playing in the handshake style, Kong jumped out of oblivion by nabbing two
gold and one silver medals in the 1995 world championships held in north Chinese
city Tianjin.
At the beginning of the year, Kong was recrutited into the national coaching
team.
