Injury-hit paddlers ‘need to cut back on competitions’

SINGAPORE — Despite the Singapore women’s team losing out on the bronze at the ongoing Asian Table Tennis Championships in Pattaya due to injuries to world No 7 Feng Tianwei and Isabelle Li, table tennis chief Ellen Lee is confident that the squad will recover and bounce back before next year’s Olympic Games.

Feng, 29, has had an injury-plagued season, with knee injuries affecting her performance during the SEA Games in June, while a back injury sustained in Pattaya ruled her out of the women’s doubles competition.

Likewise, Li is out with knee injuries, while world No 29 Yu Mengyu — who won the mixed doubles silver yesterday with partner Yang Zi — also suffered a back injury ahead of last year’s Asian Games. The men’s team also lost veteran player Zhan Jian, 33, who retired in August due to a recurring elbow injury.

With medals at stake at next year’s Olympics, Lee said yesterday that the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA) will need to relook the players’ competition schedule for the next 10 months. Younger players like Zhou Yihan, Lin Ye and local-born athletes Yee Herng Hwee (18 years old), Goi Rui Xuan (14) and Eunice Lim (15) may get more opportunities to compete.

“The Olympics is still many months away and we believe our players will be able to recover in time to take part in the Olympics,” she said during the STTA–PAP Community Foundation Table Tennis Carnival at OneKM shopping mall yesterday.

“It also means we may also need to get them on a pace that is sustainable until the Olympics. It may well be that we may not put them out in all the competitions … we will also get our younger team members to come on board to give them that exposure and experience of playing on the international stage.”

Talent-spotting and grooming local players remain a key focus for the STTA, but Lee admitted that bridging the gap between the young paddlers and the world’s top athletes will take time. The issue of juggling training with studies also remains a major hurdle for the national athletes.

And while the STTA had said previously that the aim was for a balance of 50-50 local and foreign paddlers in the national team, Lee said that target may need to be revised.

She said: “At that time we didn’t think it was an ambitious project but I think, now that we are looking at the situation as it is, it may be an ambitious project because local players may have reasons not to continue playing in the national team ... Nevertheless we still want to keep that within sight. Now that we have such a big pool of local players, we hope more will stand up and be counted.” LOW LIN FHOONG