August 6, 2008
Gao Is Hitting Close to Home as She Prepares for the Olympics
 Gao Jun high-fives Coach Doru Gheorghe at the 2008 U.S. Table Tennis Open |
Courtesy of Washington Post |
Gao Jun, a U.S. table tennis player and former Gaithersburg resident, practices in that building. But the facility is not located in Maryland or even the United States; the U.S. team doesn't have a national training complex. Gao, 39, lives and trains full time in China.
For the first time, Coach Doru Gheorghe said, the U.S. table tennis team is composed entirely of China-born athletes. So when it came to training for these Olympics, many of them decided to return home.
"They keep training in China because they realize these are [better] options than they have in the U.S.," Gheorghe said. "This is a special case; they want to train hard. They understand they have to go to China and sacrifice and train all year long. Usually, if the athletes believe they don't have a good chance, they won't go to China. These girls, they want to play well and do the best they can."
U.S. women's player Crystal Huang recently joined Gao in China. Their U.S. teammate, Wang Chen, also has trained in China in anticipation for the Olympics. The lone U.S. men's player, David Zhuang, is 44 years old, married, has two girls and lives in suburban New Jersey, but even he has taken time over the past year to practice in Beijing.
In the United States, table tennis is Ping-Pong, a hobby sport often relegated to suburban basements. In China, Gao and her teammates returned to a table tennis haven: palatial facilities that double as shrines to the sport, all filled with training partners capable of making them sweat through an extended volley.
"That's the best way to make me have the good performance," said Gao, who is 25th in the latest world rankings. "If you want the best results, China is the place for the players to train."
Gao grew up in Baoding, China, where she practiced table tennis for five hours every afternoon. She outpaced her grade school of 1,000, defeated competition from throughout Hebei province and eventually earned an invitation to start training in Beijing with the national team.
She rose to near the top of the world table tennis rankings. Shoppers noticed her in stores and people stared as she walked through the streets. She appeared regularly on television. Gao won silver in women's doubles at the 1992 Olympics but soon afterward decided to step away from the sport.
She moved to Gaithersburg in 1994. It took only three years before she returned to table tennis and, as a U.S. citizen, ended up joining the U.S. team in 1997.
But for the past few years, Gao has lived at East China University of Science and Technology, where she has studied economics and practices four hours daily. She resides with some of the world's best table tennis players and walks less than five minutes from her dorm to practice against them.
"If I want to play good, I have to go to China to train," Gao said. "In U.S., nobody was training with me. Nobody practiced with me. In the U.S., there's not many good players. We have some, but we don't live together, so it's very hard for us to train in the U.S."
USA Table Tennis is in flux, with its board of directors recently pared from 14 to nine members and its chief executive officer serving on an interim basis. Because there is no central training facility, players are left to practice overseas or at one of the nation's 260 table tennis clubs.
"That's one of the arguments, that we need to develop our kids, identify them at an early age, make sure they have the right training and right competition and make sure they go to school," said Mike Cavanaugh, interim CEO of USA Table Tennis.
Practice abroad has been a boon for the U.S. team, especially Gao. Working against dozens of highly skilled players has sharpened Gao's game, a unique style that keeps her cozy up against the table. She is all finesse, employing wide-angle and drop shots and forcing her opponents into movement.
With nine days before Opening Ceremonies, Gao still is readying for the Games. And she's doing it not in the United States but in China, in a facility filled with the world's top players. "They need to go where the partners are," Gheorghe said. "It's cheaper than to bring the partners here."
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