Wang Chen tossed the ball vertically high into the air when she knew it might be her last serve at the Beijing Olympics.
"Didn't you see that my last serve was a high toss. That is my classic serve and I just wanted to keep it for the last," Wang of the United States told reporters after losing her singles quarterfinal clash with Singapore's Li Jia Wei, a match between two Beijing-born women.
"This is my last Olympic Games. I just wanted to try my best and got every possible point," she said. "Tactically, I had a chance to win, but I'm physically weaker and overtired after the match in the morning."
However, the 34-year-old was happy about the results, saying that "I reached the last eight, which is the best result the U.S. has ever had in Olympic table tennis."
Wang announced her retirement earlier in the day, after reaching the singles quarterfinals with a hard-earned victory over the world's leading defensive player Kim Kyung-ah of South Korea, who won a singles bronze at the Athens Games and beat her 3-1 in the team event last week.
Wang knelt down and lowered her head in a flood of tears the moment she won.
"My back hurts a lot and sometimes I just want to give up, but I wanted to play at the Olympics, which is a big event," she said.
"I was emotional when I came to the match this morning because I've prepared for it for two years. I sacrificed many things and reaching the Olympic quarterfinals is my dream, which finally came true."
She also said the Chinese spectators in the Peking University Gymnasium were cheering her on because they knew that Beijing was her hometown.
But few may notice that the Beijing Games is also Wang's first Olympics.
Wang, ranked 25th in the world, used to be a member of China's national team between 1993-98. After failing twice to enter the Olympic team of the table tennis superpower, she moved to the U.S. in 1999 to help her sister run leather stores in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.
In 2001, she moved to Manhattan, where a real estate dealer offered her a job of managing a table tennis club named after her. She gained the U.S. citizenship five years later.
"There are too many excellent players in China where the competition is extremely fierce," she said. "I missed the Olympics twice so I worked really hard to prepare myself for the the only opportunity in Beijing."
"Back in the U.S., I will spend more time with my husband. I have a table tennis club there so I can continue to do something that is related to table tennis," Wang said. "I'm going to have a baby and I also want to go to college."
Wang's personal best includes a team gold at the 1997 world championships and three ITTF Pro Tour women's singles titles. She beat the then world champion Deng Yaping in the western Chinese city of Xi'an in 1996.
"Whenever I play against Chinese players, my mind is prone to wandering. It may be because I have a Chinese heart," she said earlier this year.
(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2008)