Zhang Xueling

Who is Zhang Xueling?

Zhang Xueling is a Singaporean table tennis player.

Zhang started playing table tennis at the age of 6 and made her first international appearance in 1999. She won four gold medals at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games, helping Singapore to sweep the women events as well as the mixed doubles.

Zhang has defeated her higher-ranked fellow Singaporean, Li Jiawei, 3 times to date: once at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in the women singles finals; another at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in the mixed doubles finals partnered by Cai Xiaoli against Li and her teammate, Yang Zi; and in the women singles finals in the same Games, winning four out of five gold medals for the country.

In the Athens Olympics 2004, she went to the Games with no other target than to perform at her best. Zhang Xueling played her game and surprised the nation when she defeated 14th seed, Korea’s Lee Eun Sil and Japan’s table tennis prodigy Ai Fukuhara, to secure a position in the quarter-finals, before losing to the vastly experienced Korea's Kim Hyang Mi.

However, Zhang has resigned in February, and has returned to Shanghai to join her husband, Zheng Qi. Zheng Qi was the Ex-Assistant Table Tennis Coach for the Singapore's Men's Team. Zhang's departure was due to Wang Yuegu, another Chinese-born Table Tennis Player, who has just received her Singaporean citizenship in February 2007.