Sleepless in Shanghai
April 30, 2005Here I am in Shanghai with the Philippine team. In 8 hours, the World Table Tennis Championships will begin. I am extremely excited. I hopped on the complimentary shuttle bus (on the way to my hotel), and the first player I actually saw as we approached Shanghai Gymnasium was JO Waldner w/ the rest of the Swedish team in their blue and yellow outfits. I had expected Waldner to have a big entourage here in China (after all, he is bigger than Michael Jordan here), but not so. Maybe we’ll actually get to meet some members of the Swedish team. In short order, I spotted JM Saive of Belgium, Wang Hao of China (the 2004 Olympic silver medalist), then Chuang Chi-Yuan of Taiwan.
The players, on the other hand, are decidedly low-key about the whole thing. I was shocked to learn to learn that it was only last night (Thursday night) when the players learned for sure whether the trip was on or not. Apparently there has been some problem with getting funding for the trip from the Philippine Sports Commission and the First Gentleman’s Foundation. I do not who is at fault for this; but I think it’s extremely hard for a player to focus on his game and his competition with this sort of uncertainty, even up till the day just before the first match.
