CHENNAI: When she was eight, Lily Zhang often used their dinky dining table at home as a make-believe table tennis table to play the sport. At 18, Zhang, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was so done with the sport she wanted to quit. At 28, by a lot of metrics, she’s the most accomplished table tennis player to emerge from the US over the last four decades.
She has featured in four Olympics. She made it to the pre-quarterfinals in Paris, a feat many of her compatriots haven’t even come close to achieving. In 2021, she became the first American to win a Worlds medal (as part of a mixed team) in 62 years.
After her Paris exertions and all that it entailed, Zhang, who loves eating garlic naan and gulab jamun, is at a crossroads. Does she stick or twist? The prospect of the home Olympics in 2028 is a nice light at the end of the tunnel — “table tennis is a sport that doesn’t have much exposure or government funding in the US,” she tells in an interaction with this daily — but she’s inspired by something greater. The idea of being a role model to future generations, to be able to tell kids that it’s possible to become something in the sport even considering the inherent advantages of pursuing it in the US.
“It’s so important to be especially because I didn’t really that growing up... my plan was to quit (the sport) as soon as I went to college,” she says on the sidelines of the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) event in Chennai. “Most people just quit when they reach college. That was my plan as well and I didn’t expect to be here at all. I can tell you that I was so done with the sport when I was 18. I feel like after I graduated (psychology from Berkeley), there was something missing. I really missed the sport and so, that’s why I came back to it. I want the younger generation to be able to see a possibility...
“Trying to pave a path for the younger generation. (You know) try and work things out if that’s what they really love to do they should be able to follow their dreams.”
While playing the sport wasn’t, strictly speaking, a young Zhang’s dream, it’s the sport ‘that spoke to me personally’. “I was involved in a lot of other outside activities as well but the sport was something that spoke to me personally. I would play every weekend at a local community centre and that was the one thing I looked forward to the most. I think I naturally gravitated to the sport but never in wildest dreams did I expect to reach this level.”
Around the Tokyo Games, she went back to the image of a kid — herself — playing the sport in their apartment in Palo Alto, California. It kind of helped her put things in perspective as she kind of fell into the trap of ‘associating my own self worth with how I was playing so I don’t think that was very helpful for me’. “What I try to do now is think about the little girl who started playing table tennis in that dinky little dining table/table tennis table and she loved to play.”
While being the best in an Olympic sport from a population of over 300mn is grand, she has to juggle a professional career with the sometimes disapproving eyes of her parents. Make no mistake, they support her wholeheartedly but sometimes they fit the stereotype of typical Asian parents. “I think it’s a complex situation because they are immigrants. I think they want a better life for me. In their eyes, it’s having a stable income, stable job and they know how hard the sport is. End of the day, they do support me and want me to be happy.”
Right now, she’s very happy.