Heart Of A Girl

Chinese women’s table tennis team captain and Olympic gold medallist Ding Ning chats with ZARA ZHUANG about squad goals, her lack of shopping stamina and life beyond sports

- Zara Zhuang

DING NING ON court is a sight to behold: That steely gaze, explosive serves and powerful returns make her matches a thrill to watch. But when she’s not gunning for sporting glory, she winds down with drama serials and TV variety programmes on her tablet, shares food photos with her two million Weibo followers, banters with her mother on her avoidance of sunscreen, and giggles when dressed up and positioned in front of a camera.

“People might say I look aggressive, almost murderous, on court — I’m focused during games, and I’m passionate when I play,” Ding says. “But in private I’m more gentle, I like to eat and go out — an extrovert, definitely.”

The 27-year-old had plenty of time to indulge during a week-long jaunt to town, during which she toured Universal Studios Singapore, and dug into chilli crab and rainbow bread ice cream sandwiches like a local. The world’s top-ranked player, according to the International Table Tennis Federation, had just won her third singles’ title at the 2017 World Table Tennis Championships in Düsseldorf in June, and competed in the inaugural season of the T2 Asia-Pacific Table Tennis League at Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios in early July.

Once back at home, the 2016 Rio Olympic women’s singles gold medallist will return to her rigorous training — morning and afternoon sessions, with lunch in-between, and lights out at 10.30pm, a routine she’s kept since the age of 10, after moving from Heilongjiang to Beijing to join the table tennis team.

“At the start I didn’t think I loved table tennis, because I felt it was tiring and challenging,” she says. “But my friends reminded me, ‘Ning, you really love the sport’. I kept coming back to it in every conversation and they’d say, ‘Can’t you talk about anything else?’”