The US has never even come close to medaling in ping pong.  To be brutally honest, they have a difficult enough time just qualifying somebody to participate. I was watching the US women’s ping pong team the other night, and it wasn’t until about half way through the match that I realized I was rooting for the wrong team. I was rooting for Necula & Samara when I should have been rooting for Xi Huang and Gao Jun (shown to the right). Stupid me. Not sure what I was thinking. But then I did a little more research on our “American” ping pong team. I know, I know, it’s really “Table Tennis”, but I just like saying ping pong. The US womens team qualified 3 members, Gao Jun, Crystal Xi Huang and Wang Chen.  I know what you are thinking… please don’t say, “Everybody Wang Chen tonight!”, too late. All 3 were born in China and 2 of the 3 have actually competed for China in ping pong. 39 year old Gao Jun actually has a Silver medal for China from the ‘92 games. Later, she could no longer make the Chinese team, so she decided to “move” to the US where should could be the best player in the country! So now she plays for the good ole USA! Although she still lives and trains in China, because she says that she needs to train with good players and there are no good players in America. But she did admit that she comes to America for a couple weeks out of the year (to pick up her red white & blue outfit no doubt). Another strange note on Jun’s bio is that she married American Frank Chang and moved to the US in 2000, and “changed her name to Jun Gao Chang to Americanize it”. What? Since when was does naming yourself Chang, Americanize you? I guess it does now. But then she got divorced and moved back to China in 2002, but that hasn’t hindered her from being America’s top ping ponger.

On the Men’s side, the US only had 1 player qualify for the Olympics, David Zhuang, also born in China. He’s 44 years old. We are clearly not too proud to take the Chinese ping pong leftovers.  I mean if we’ll take David Beckham, why not Gua, Huang, Chen and Zhuang?  Truthfully, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t even get to be in the Olympics :-) The team ping pong competition requires 3 people, so the USA men (or man) did not have enough for a team :-)

Give me a freakin paddle!