Did you hear the one about the 61-year-old grandmother who beat the world’s best table tennis player? Well, she didn’t. Not quite. On Monday, Luxembourg’s Ni Xia Lian, who was born on 4 July 1963, became the oldest competitor in the history of the Olympics to win a table tennis match when she beat the 31-year-old Turkish player Sibel Altinkaya. On Wednesday, she became the oldest player in the history of the Olympics to lose one, too, when she was beaten by the Chinese world and Olympic silver medallist Sun Yingsha. Sun, 23, who is the world No 1 and won team gold in Tokyo, isn’t just 38 years younger than Ni, she’s nine years younger than her son, too.
Sun won in straight games, 4-0, but when it was all over, it was Ni who got the standing ovation from the happy crowd and a hug from the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and who had to stay on long after the session was over and the stands had emptied out to talk to all the different TV crews and news journalists who wanted to tell her story. She is a remarkable woman, all sweetness and smiles until she steps up to the table. She says the athlete at the Games she most wants to share a cup of coffee with is her husband, Tommy Danielsson, who used to compete for Sweden, and that her hobby is “making her home beautiful”. Along with destroying players half her age.
