To bring our readers a full report on their prospects Sinorama went to the Tsoying Sports Training Center in southern Taiwan and talked with Ts'ai and the members of the R.O.C.'s table tennis team.

"Victory or defeat decided in an instant" sums up the excitement and thrill of table tennis. A little white ball flies across a table less than three meters long, and in few tenths of a second the opposing player must react and decide how to return it while maintaining full control of steadiness, accuracy, force, and spin.

Table tennis, which is even less restricted by limitations of physique than tennis or volleyball, is one of the sports in which Asians excel. The world of table tennis is split at present between the two blocs of Europe and Asia, and the styles of play in each bloc differ according to the players' respective physical advantages.

The strongest players in Europe come from Sweden, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Most Europeans stand back from the table, hold the paddle horizontally, and hit the ball on an arc or apply a lot of spin, making it hard to defend against. Most Asian players hold the paddle vertically, stand near the table, and favor a fast attack. The best teams in Asia come from mainland China, North and South Korea, the R.O.C., and Japan. Based on individual rankings and the record for matches between the two sides in recent years, Asia is still a little ahead.

The R.O.C. rejoined the International Table Tennis Association in 1984. In 1985 it took part in the 38th World Cup competition, held in Sweden, and finished first among the women and second among the men in the second division. At the 39th World Cup, held in India last year, the R.O.C. was promoted to the first division, where it finished eighth among the men and tenth among the women. And at the Asian Cup held in Japan this May the R.O.C. table tennis team captured a championship in the mixed doubles competition. Its performance over the past three or four years has earned the country a great deal of attention among international table tennis watchers.

Table tennis will be offered as a formal Olympic event for the first time in Seoul this year.

To permit athletes from various countries to have a chance to participate, the International Table Tennis Association has limited the number of players that each country may send to the Olympics to a maximum of three men and two women. That decision has kept off the roster several players who rank in the top twenty worldwide but who play for strong teams such as Sweden's and Mainland China's. Because North Korea is boycotting the games, the R.O.C. has been allowed to send four men and two women. The men are Wu Wen-chia, Huang Hui-chieh, Chi Chin-lung, and Chi Chin-shui, and the women are Chang Hsiu-yu and Lin Li-ju.

Wu, the R.O.C.'s top player, is seeded sixteenth among the 64 players in the men's division. He is ranked 27th in the world and has defeated many players in the top ten.

"He's an athlete who demands so much of himself he makes his coach worried too," frets Lin Chung-hsiung, coach of the R.O.C.'s table tennis team and a teacher and second father to Wu. Lin lists Wu's greatest strengths as his power, his endurance, and his fighting spirit, which give him an awesome attack. But he also worries about Wu's weaknesses: "He lacks a sense of rhythm and tempo, and his backhand is better at defense than attack."

"I have to keep telling myself I'm still not good enough," says Wu, who makes a habit of training hard. "You can't worry about how good other people think you should be. I just remind myself that each game in the Olympics will be an all-out battle, and that I'll have to do my best and give it everything I've got."

Indeed, winning a medal among the 64 men or the 48 women in the singles competition won't be easy. "The doubles are really our main goal," Lin says. The team will begin training all day long in July, and the chief focus will be on strengthening their doubles play. More than ten stand-ins will take turns as opponents, as the players work to develop their rhythm and coordination together.

One hopeful prospect for the Olympics is the team of Chi Chin-lung and Chi Chin-shui, who came in second at the Asian Games after defeating Chiang Chia-liang and Hsu Tzeng-ts'ai of the mainland and then losing by a hair to the mainland's Ch'en Ts'an-lung and Wei Ch'ing-kuang. They also happen to be the only pair of twins in the competition. "Every time I want to say something, my brother beats me to it," Chi Chin-lung says. "Our excellent chemistry together is our greatest advantage."

"It's a round ball," coach Wang Yu-hsin says, "and we won't know who wins until the final bounce." Our chances of victory may be rather small, but Wu and the others will be well worth watching on.

Ts'ai Wen-i is the only member of the R.O.C.'s 1988 Olympics team to have won an Olympic medal four years ago. He gave up training for two or three years because of illness, but in the most recent competition since his recovery he has shown that he is capable of winning a medal again this year.

It was on August 1, 1984, that a dark horse competitor shocked the experts and brought a joyous surprise to the Republic of China. The dark horse was Ts'ai Wen-i, who defeated several tough rivals to win a bronze medal in the third weightlifting class at the Los Angeles Olympics. It was a highly significant achievement in the history of Chinese sport. The R.O.C. hadn't won a medal in a formal Olympic event for nearly thirty years, and Ts'ai, unlike C.K. Yang and Chi Cheng, the two previous Olympic medallists, was a completely "local product"--he had never gone overseas for training.

Nonetheless, most people couldn't help thinking that Ts'ai had a chance only because the East European athletes were absent.

"The lucky opportunity was the same for everybody," Ts'ai said and, though he was already 28 years old at the time, swore to return to the weightlifting stage in the 1988 Olympics and compete against the world's he-men to prove that his medal was not a fluke.

But that date looked far off indeed.

"There are a host of talented weightlifters around the world, and a new star can crop up at any competition. One day you're on top, and pretty soon people are catching up." Ts'ai was well aware that time is merciless toward an athlete nearing thirty.

After returning home from the Los Angeles Olympics, Ts'ai took over as coach of the weightlifting squad at the Tsoying Sports Training Center, where he was put in charge of training the squad for the Seoul Olympics. But at one period during the past three years, Ts'ai seemed disaffected with weightlifting and to have given up the sport for good.

The fact was that a year after the L.A. Olympics Ts'ai came down with hepatitis B and was nearly unable to train again. "The next year or two was the worst time of my life," he recalls. After more than a year of rest and recuperation he was still four or five kilos lighter than he had been before.

Despite having been so ill, he was still hooked on the joy of weightlifting. Since he had become so thin he had to drop to the second class, under 56 kilos, and he worked all out against time to see whether he could take part in the Olympics again.

Ts'ai told himself that the Chairman Cup competition of the Taiwan Weightlifting Association held in Tainan in the middle of this June would be his last chance to rebuild his confidence. In one powerful effort he set a new national record with a combined snatch and clean-and-jerk of 267.5 kilos.

That kind of achievement would have won him a gold medal at Los Angeles in 1984, and even though now it was only good enough to rank him fourth in the world, it fired him up with the ambition to win another medal this year at Seoul.

Ts'ai began to focus all his energies on preparing for the Olympics this spring. He gets out of bed at six o'clock every morning six days a week at the Tsoying center for training. And to preserve his explosive power, he needs to lower his body weight two or three days before a competition. "In the few minutes before you get up on stage, you can't feel sorry for yourself for being so hungry," he says. "You've got to tell yourself about the strength and movements you need to lift the kind of weight you're about to attempt."

"In all my past 74 competitions I've never had a perfect lift," Ts'ai says. "But 280 kilos at the Seoul Olympics--that's my goal. It's my most important goal in eighteen years of weightlifting, and it's also my last chance."

"I'm not in a very good position these days," Tsai says, a comparative oldster at 32. "Everybody expects I can win a medal again. There's a lot of pressure and it makes me scared, but the more I'm scared, the more I want to practice."

During the middle of June, President Lee Teng-hui went to Tsoying to encourage the athletes who are going to take part in the Olympics. President Lee encouraged Ts'ai to display the same power he showed four years ago and bring honor to the country by winning another medal.

[Picture Caption]

The R.O.C.'s Olympic table tennis team (from left to right): Chang Hsiu-yu, Lin Li-ju, and Wu Wen-chia. Chi Chin-lung, Huang Hui-chieh, and Chi Chin-shui.

Chang Hsiu-yu is the country's best female player.

Besides playing singles, she will match up with Lin Li-ju to go after a medal in the doubles competition.

In addition to their "main course" of training at the table, Wu Wen-chia(left) and Huang Hui-chieh run 5,000 meters every day as "dessert."

Chi Chin-shui is stronger at defense than attack. He will play as a doubles partner at the Seoul Olympics with his twin brother Chi Chin-lung.

Ts'ai Wen-i has cast off the shadow of hepatitis. He has been training hard since the spring to prove he has the power to win a medal.

Chang Hsiu-yu is the country's best female player.

In addition to their "main course" of training at the table, Wu Wen-chia（left） and Huang Hui-chieh run 5,000 meters every day as "dessert.".

Chi Chin-shui is stronger at defense than attack. He will play as a doubles partner at the Seoul Olympics with his twin brother Chi Chin-lung.

Ts'ai Wen-i has cast off the shadow of hepatitis. He has been training hard since the spring to prove he has the power to win a medal.