#文章首发挑战赛#
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(Ni Xialian)
On January 12, 2024, the World Table Tennis Professional League Doha Star Challenge kicked off. The 61-year-old table tennis veteran Ni Xialian defeated the main force of national table tennis and broke into the top 16 of women's singles. Ni Xialian is 41 years older than Kuo Man, which can be called the duel between grandma and granddaughter, which has aroused heated discussions among netizens.
Ni Xialian was the main member of the national table tennis women's team, winning the women's team championship and mixed doubles championship of the 37th World Table Tennis Championships, and the runner-up of the women's doubles of the 38th World Table Tennis Championships.
After retiring, Ni Xialian went to Luxembourg, a small European country, to play and settle down. At the age of 61 this year, she is still fighting in the table tennis arena and is an out-and-out table tennis legend.
Ni Xialian was once hurt by Cao Yanhua, the "first sister of female table tennis", what is going on? Ni Xialian was divorced once, and then married a foreign husband, what happened now?
01
(Group photo of the 1972 Shanghai Jiangwan Stadium Junior Sports School table tennis team.) The second from the left in the front row is Ni Xialian, and the third from the left in the second row is Shen Jianping. ）
Ni Xialian was born in Shanghai on July 4, 1963, her father Ni Ruifu is a worker in the Shanghai Silk Factory, and her mother Ye Yuanhua is a worker in the Shanghai Chang'an Silk Factory.
Ni Xialian has two older sisters and an older brother, and she is the youngest child in the family.
When Ni Xialian was 7 years old, the black-and-white TV in the housing management office opposite her home broadcast the Asian, African and Latin American table tennis championships in the evening, and Ni Xialian never got tired of watching it, so she became obsessed with table tennis.
When she was in the second grade of primary school, Ni Xialian joined the school's table tennis team and soon beat the school's invincible opponents.
In the fourth grade of primary school, the teacher recommended Ni Xialian to practice table tennis at the Jiangwan District Sports School in Shanghai. Because of the lack of height advantage, Ni Xialian practiced harder than others, and gradually stood out in the sports school.
(Ni Xialian in the early years)
When Ni Xialian was 12 years old, she won the Shanghai primary school women's table tennis singles championship.
In 1977, 14-year-old Ni Xialian won the national junior table tennis women's singles championship.
In 1978, Ni Xialian participated in the World Student Games held in Izmir, Turkey, with the team, and won the women's team and women's doubles championships.
In 1979, Ni Xialian represented the Shanghai table tennis team in the 4th National Games, defeated Tong Ling and other world champions, and won the women's singles runner-up.
In the same year, Ni Xialian was selected for the national table tennis team, and the head coach was Ma Jinbao. The national table tennis women's team is full of talents, and Ni Xialian, who is 1.57 meters tall, is short and cannot be among the main layer.
(A recent photo of Ma Jinbao, a famous table tennis player)
Ni Xialian is competitive and unwilling to be a green leaf for the rest of her life. At the suggestion of the coach, she changed to one side of the straight rubber and the other side of the long rubber, forming a unique straight board long rubber reverse board full attack style of play.
Ni Xialian not only maintained the advantage of serving and attacking, but also made great progress in the change of ball path and defense.
In 1982, Ni Xialian visited Japan with the team, and she won 17 of 18 games.
In 1983, the 37th World Table Tennis Championships was held in Birmingham, England, and Ni Xialian participated in the women's team, women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles competitions.
In this World Table Tennis Championships, the four members of the national table tennis women's team are: Cao Yanhua, Tong Ling, Geng Lijuan, and Ni Xialian. Ni Xialian helped the national table tennis women's team win the team championship.
(Cao Yanhua in the early years)
In the individual competition, Ni Xialian cooperated with Guo Yuehua and won the mixed doubles championship. Ni Xialian also cooperated with Cao Yanhua and won the third place in women's doubles. In the women's singles competition, Ni Xialian broke into the top 8.
Ni Xialian and Cao Yanhua are both Shanghainese, both of them are the main force of the national table tennis women's team, and they also cooperate with the women's doubles, like sisters.
However, Ni Xialian was later deeply hurt by Cao Yanhua, what happened?
02
It turned out that Cao Yanhua was in love with Shi Zhihao of the national table tennis men's team at that time, and Shi Zhihao was returned to the Bayi team. Cao Yanhua was left in the team after writing the inspection because she was the "first sister of female table tennis".
(Young Cao Yanhua and Shi Zhihao)
Later, Cao Yanhua wrote in her autobiography: When she was at her lowest and helpless, the players did not help her, but often reported to the coach and suppressed her.
Cao Yanhua mentioned one of them in her autobiography as He Zhili, a fellow villager in Shanghai. Another Cao Yanhua was indirectly named, saying that she cooperated with her in women's doubles, and the relationship was originally very good, but the other party stepped on her in order to cater to the coach.
Cao Yanhua nicknamed her in her autobiography, saying that she jumped around and failed to make it to the women's group list in the end. Obviously, the teammate Cao Yanhua said in his autobiography is Ni Xialian.
In 1985, the 38th World Table Tennis Championships was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Ni Xialian was not selected for the women's team lineup, and only participated in 3 events: women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles.
(Ni Xialian)
On the eve of the World Table Tennis Championships, Cao Yanhua had already made a retirement report, but the team kept her and did not report her to the team competition. Cao Yanhua worked as a sparring partner for Tong Ling and Dai Lili.
Cao Yanhua has a strong personality and is psychologically dissatisfied. In the 1985 World Table Tennis Championships, Cao Yanhua participated in three competitions: women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles.
Seven members of the Chinese team broke into the top 8 of the women's singles, and in the quarterfinals, the coach asked Cao Yanhua to give Tong Ling the ball, but was refused.
Cao Yanhua defeated Tong Ling to enter the top 4, and defeated teammate Qi Baoxiang in the semifinals. In the final, Cao Yanhua faced her teammate Geng Lijuan and won the women's singles championship 3-1.
(From left: Shi Zhihao, Cao Yanhua, Cai Zhenhua)
Cao Yanhua also teamed up with Cai Zhenhua to win the mixed doubles title. And Ni Xialian and Cao Yanhua teamed up with the women's doubles and also entered the final, the opponent was Dai Lili/Geng Lijuan.
As a result, Cao Yanhua's performance was abnormal, and she and Ni Xialian lost to their teammates and won the women's doubles runner-up.
Ni Xialian knew that Cao Yanhua was deliberately losing, and she was very painful in her heart. Cao Yanhua has already won two titles, while Ni Xialian needs the Women's Doubles title.
Many years later, Cao Yanhua said bluntly in an interview: I deliberately lost in the women's doubles final to take revenge on her.
In this World Championships, Ni Xialian and Guo Yuehua won the third place in mixed doubles and did not win a championship.
(In April 1983, Ni Xialian and Guo Yuehua in the mixed doubles final of the 37th World Table Tennis Championships)
Cao Yanhua retired after the World Table Tennis Championships, but no one from the coach or teammates said a fair word for Ni Xialian, and Ni Xialian was very sad and disappointed.
Cao Yanhua's injury lingered in Ni Xialian's heart, and in 1986, 23-year-old Ni Xialian retired painfully.
Many years later, in an interview, Ni Xialian said that she was already relieved, and she also said a lot of good things about Cao Yanhua.
03
After retiring, Ni Xialian entered Shanghai Jiao Tong University for further study. In 1989, with the help of the national table tennis team, Ni Xialian went to play at Bayer Club in Germany.
Throughout the season, Ni Xialian did not lose a game, and many clubs in Europe invited her to join.
(Ni Xialian's family photo)
At this time, Ni Xialian was already married, and her husband's name was Lin Hongwei. He was also a former table tennis player, and after retiring from the army, he was engaged in the import and export trade business in Luxembourg.
In 1990, Ni moved to Luxembourg with her husband, where she played and coached at a club.
In 1992, Ni Xialian gave birth to her son Willy in Luxembourg. In 1995, Ni Xialian was ready to leave the table tennis arena and have another child. However, Ni Xialian couldn't give up the table tennis ball, so she dispelled the idea of having another baby.
In 1996, 1997 and 1998, Ni Xialian won the European Top 12 Championship for three consecutive times. She also won the Polish Open, the Bulgarian Open, the European Championship Women's Singles, and the US Open twice.
In 1998, Ni Xialian's ranking rose to No. 4 in the world, second only to Deng Yaping, Wang Nan, and Li Ju.
(Ni Xialian on the field)
Ni Xialian is running around in foreign competitions, and she has no time to take care of her son, nor can she fulfill her wife's responsibilities and obligations. Her husband Lin Hongwei did not accept Ni Xialian's lifestyle and hoped that she would put down her racket and become a full-time housewife.
Due to the big difference in life concepts, Ni Xialian and her husband went through divorce procedures in 2002, and their son lived with her.
The divorce brought great trauma to Ni Xialian, she suffered from insomnia for 3 months, and often cried in the early hours of the morning.
In July of this year, Ni Xialian was going to take her son to Germany for a trip to forget the pain of divorce.
(Ni Xialian's highlight moment of winning the championship)
Who knows that the head coach of the Luxembourg national table tennis team came to Ni Xialian's residence 3 times to invite her to play. So Ni Xialian made a comeback and soon won the women's singles and women's doubles championships in the European Championships.
The two titles ignited the Luxembourg nation's passion for table tennis, and the media and television often reported on Ni Xialian, who was widely respected as soon as she went out.
04
In 2003, Ni Xialian remarried, and her husband's name was Tommy. He was born in Germany, has Swedish citizenship and is based in Luxembourg.
Tommy was a member of the Swedish national table tennis team and rose to No. 9 in the world at one point. After retiring, Tommy served as the head coach of the Australian men's national table tennis team and later as the head coach of a table tennis club in Germany.
(Ni Xialian and Tommy)
In 1994, Tommy was hired as the head coach of the Luxembourg national table tennis team. Ni Xialian and Tommy have known each other for a long time, but they are ordinary friends with each other.
Tommy is 8 years older than Ni Xialian, divorced once, and has a son by his side. In 2003, after Ni Xialian and Tommy remarried, they gave birth to their daughter Celine in Luxembourg.
Ni Xialian's son, daughter, and Tommy father and son, 5 people live in a family. Supposedly, the relationship is complicated, but the family gets along very harmoniously.
After remarrying, Tommy worked as Ni Xialian's personal trainer, and the couple lived and worked in life.
When Ni Xialian's son Willy was in middle school, he became obsessed with magic, and Tommy took him to apprentice, and Willy performed magic tricks on stage as a teenager.
(Mr. and Mrs. Ni Xialian, daughter and son)
After Ni Xialian's daughter entered high school, she went to Shanghai Foreign Chinese University as an exchange student and lived in the home of her classmates in Shanghai.
Ni Xialian, her son and daughter all speak Shanghainese at home and eat Chinese food. Under their influence, Tommy and his son also learned a lot of Shanghainese and liked to eat Chinese food.
After remarrying, the family lived in Ettebruck, Luxembourg's second largest city. They live in single-family houses with vegetable gardens full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and apple trees. Ni Xialian often uses the vegetables she grows to wrap wontons for her family to eat.
Table tennis clubs in European countries are all non-governmental, and they have to play games to earn money. Moreover, you have to spend your own money for training, and you have to pay for the equipment and clothing used in the competition, so it is difficult to support yourself by playing table tennis. So Ni Xialian opened a small hotel with her husband while playing ball.
(Ni Xialian)
Ni Xialian plays in Luxembourg without a little pressure and regards playing table tennis as a happy thing.
Ni Xialian participated in a total of 5 Olympic Games in Sydney 2000, Beijing in 2008, London in 2012, Rio in 2016, and Tokyo in 2021, which is rare in the history of world table tennis.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Ni Xialian became the flag bearer of the Luxembourg delegation. The Luxembourg media hailed her as a "national treasure athlete".
05
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Ni Xialian broke into the top 16 of women's singles. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Ni Xialian is 57 years old, and when she competed with South Korea's talented teenager Shin Yubin, the two were 41 years apart, and they were called "grandfather and grandson war" by the media.
(South Korea's Shin Yubin)
(Ni Xialian and his wife at the Tokyo Olympics)
Ni Xialian won two games in a row with two 11-2 at the beginning, and then due to physical exhaustion, plus two knee injuries were serious, and finally she lost to the Korean teenager 3-4.
Ni Xialian walked off the field, Tommy and his wife hugged tightly as coach, and the audience dedicated warm applause to this indomitable "Olympic couple".
Although she is already middle-aged, Ni Xialian is majestic in the European arena. As early as the 2017 Croatian Open, Ni Xialian defeated Ai Fukuhara 4-3.
In the 2017 World Table Tennis Championships, Ni Xialian entered the third round of women's singles, and then lost 0-4 to Ding Ning.
(Ni Xialian)
In July 2020, Ni Xialian helped the team win the Croatian Cup women's team championship.
At the World Table Tennis Championships in Houston in November 2021, 58-year-old Ni Xialian and her partner Denate won the bronze medal in women's doubles. For this reason, Ni Xialian rushed to the hot search, which attracted the attention of more young people.
In the Singapore Grand Slam Table Tennis Tournament in March 2022, Ni Xialian partnered with Dinut and won the third place in women's doubles.
At the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships in September 2022, Ni Xialian defeated South Korean star Tian Zhixi 3-1 and helped the Luxembourg team defeat the South Korean team 3-1.
(Ni Xialian and Tommy)
At this time, Ni Xialian was 59 years old, still fighting everywhere, and was called "a living fossil in the table tennis world" by the media.
Ni Xialian's parents, older brother and sister all settled in Luxembourg, and they opened Chinese restaurants and hotels, and lived a stable and prosperous life. Ni Xialian's mother is 94 years old, and Ni Xialian takes care of her mother at home when she is not playing.
After graduating from medical school, Ni Xialian's son became a professional sports therapist. In addition to Ni Xialian's training, her son often gives her physiotherapy.
In January 2024, Ni Xialian has crossed the threshold of 61 years old and is still fighting in the table tennis world. And she'll keep fighting until she can't beat anymore.
(Ni Xialian's family photo)
Ni Xialian plays multiple roles as a wife, mother, and daughter, but she can play until she is 61 years old, and she is worthy of being a legend in the table tennis world.
It is difficult for women to do something, and many women are dragged down by their families and children. And the reason why Ni Xialian can become an evergreen in the table tennis world is because she has a good husband who is considerate and understanding, and has good sons and daughters who are filial and sensible, and they jointly hold up Ni Xialian's table tennis career!
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The headline number was first released, and the whole network was opened to protect rights, and plagiarism must be investigated!