In the documentary footage, seventeen-year-old Wang Chuqin was a proud and radiant youth. He was a dazzling new star freshly emerging in the table tennis world, gifted with exceptional skills, facial features that had lost their baby fat and were gradually turning handsome, and a fresh, razor-sharp aura whenever he stepped onto the court.
Yet no one knew how desperately this boy craved a monumental victory to silence every doubt and prove himself. His desire to win possessed a kind of inexplicable stubbornness: he had broken several rackets, worn through dozens of pairs of shoes, captured three gold medals in the team, singles, and mixed doubles at the Asian Junior Championships, and finally, after battling through the qualifiers, stood on the singles stage of the National Games.
Table tennis has always been a sport where singles is king, and the title athletes desire most above all else is the singles championship. Although the National Games is a domestic tournament, because table tennis in China has essentially been the dominant home ground for the past twenty years, gathering the absolute top-tier players, the brutality of winning a singles gold medal here surpasses, in a sense, even the three major international tournaments.
Chapter 27