Chile’s Zhiying Zeng plays a return to Lebanon’s Mariana Sahakian during their women’s table tennis singles preliminary round at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the South Paris Arena in Paris on July 27, 2024.
Amid a Paris Olympics partially defined by Gen-Z TikToks and emerging teen superstars, one table tennis player is showing fans that there’s a place at the Games for seniors, too.
Zeng Zhiying, 58, made her Olympic debut last weekend, almost four decades after she missed out on being selected to represent China in Los Angeles 1984. Zeng is now representing Chile. Though the athlete, affectionately dubbed the “table tennis Grandma,” lost in the preliminary round on Saturday, bringing her Olympic journey to a close, she says still looking up.
“I don’t feel very sad, because this is sport,” Zeng told Reuters. “My husband, my sons, everyone I love and care about were there shouting my name. I feel so content.”
Zeng, the oldest person to debut in Olympic table tennis, lost to 46-year-old Mariana Sahakian of Lebanon 4-1. Zeng said that despite the loss, the match was a dream come true.
“Even when I was a little girl and they would ask me what my dream was, I would say: ‘Become an Olympian,’” she told CNN.
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The athlete also reunited in Paris with an old buddy, Ni Xialian, a 61-year-old former teammate of Zeng’s who is representing Luxembourg. Ni exited the competition on Wednesday after a loss to Olympic silver medallist Sun Yingsha of China.
Zeng’s journey to the Olympics began as a child in China, where she quickly moved up the ranks and turned pro at 12 years old. Four years later, she made the Chinese national team. However, before the sport made its Olympic debut in 1988, table tennis introduced a paddle-related rule change.
“The change of rules affected my game a lot,” she told CNN. “That’s when I had a big downturn and left the national team.”
In the late 1980s, Zeng received an invitation to coach schoolchildren in Chile. She took it, but later took a decadeslong break from the sport to focus on her import goods business. She would pick the paddle again during the pandemic, she told The Guardian.
Though her journey has brought her across international borders and quite different environments, Zeng, who goes by the name Tania in Chile, said she’s thrived in her new country. It seems her adopted country has embraced her as well. In the Pan-American Games in 2023, hosted by Chile, Zeng emerged as a national favorite, earning the nickname “Tia Tania.”
“I’ve never had problems, and everyone acknowledges my achievements,” she told The Guardian.
With the Olympics behind her, Zeng said she understands that making the next Games will be an uphill battle. But she’s not going to stop playing.
“As long as my body is not injured, I’ll still play,” she told Reuters. “Even if I can’t play at this level, I can still play at the Masters level.”
This Paris Games are hosting Olympians of a wide range of ages. The youngest competitor is skateboarder Zheng Haohao of China, who is 11 years old. The oldest is 65-year-old Juan Antonio Jimenez Cobo of Spain, who made his Olympic debut in equestrian at the Sydney Games, a full 12 years before Zheng was born.
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