Table Tennis Profile: Deng Yaping
Deng Yaping is a Chinese professional table tennis player who won her first national championship at the age of 13. She began playing the game since she was five and won her first provincial Junior Championship when she was 9 years old. She was born on February
5, 1973 and is considered as one of the finest table tennis players in the history of the sport.
Between 1989 and 1997 Yaping has won four Olympic and six World Championships for China as she seemed to have overcame all the obstacles in her way. The biggest hurdle in Deng’s way was her height as she stood only 4ft 11in tall. Regardless of her performance
Deng found it really hard to make her place in the Chinese national team because she was a few inches less than the average table tennis players.
She continues to impress the selectors with her match winning performances and finally secured a place in the national team as she started her professional career in 1988. Her first win came one year later as she won the Women’s doubles competition in 1989
teaming up with Qiao Hong. Winning the doubles competition was just the start she wanted as two years later in 1991 Yaping claimed her first Singles World Championship.
The 38-year-old participated at her first Summer Olympic Games in 1992 as she dominated the Estació del Nord Sports Hall in Spain that was renovated to hold up the table tennis events during the 1992 Olympics in Spain. She won the gold medal in the single
events as her compatriot Qiao Hong won the silver medal while Li Bun-h*i of North Korea and Hyun Jung-Hwa of South Korea both won the bronze medals. Yaping teamed up with Qiao Hong to win the Women’s doubles event at the 1992 Summer Olympics Games as they
overcame their fellow compatriots Chen Zihe and Gao Jun to win the Women’s doubles event. Li Bun-h*i partnered with Yu Sun-Bok as Hyn Jung-Hwa partnered Hong Cha-Ok to share bronze medals amongst themselves.
Deng repeated her ’92 performance at the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Georgia, United States as she defeated Chen Jing to win the gold medal at the Women’s singles event while Qiao Hong won the bronze medal. Yaping teamed up with Qiao Hong to defeat
Liu Wei and Qiao Yunping in the Women’s doubles event.
During her interview with CNN Yaping briefed her thoughts about table tennis in China as she said, “I think table tennis is a good sport for Chinese people to play, but because there’s a lot of techniques and tactics inside. So you need to play, to control.
It’s very interesting game, a lot of spins, and it spins very fast.” She further commented on how her interest developed in the sport as she said, “My father was my first coach. So I had that advantage for that. So I started to train because I am too short,
and the table is here, only one head over the table, I can start to play.”
Yaping retired from the sport in 1997 and was voted as the Chinese Female Athlete of the Century as she joined the International Table Tennis Federation Hall of Fame in 2003. After her departure from the sport Deng joined International Olympic Committee’s
athletes and ethics commission, she also represented Chinese People’s political consultative conference and Laureus World Sports Academy.
She married a former table tennis player Lin Zhigang in 2007 and is a mother of a baby boy at the moment. Yaping wrote her thesis on “The impact of the Olympic Games on Chinese development: A multi-disciplinary analysis” as part of her Ph.D programme which
she completed from Cambridge.
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