9 Things To Know About Tokyo Olympics 2020 Table Tennis Player, Yu Mengyu
The Singapore table tennis player has showed lots of tenacity and promise at the Olympics. Here are some facts about her
While Singapore table tennis player Yu Mengyu did not manage to win a medal, her soaring journey to the women's table tennis semi-finals, beating world No. 10 Kasumi Ishikawa in the process, had the nation cheering her on.
Yu, ranked 47th, lost to China’s top-ranked paddler Chen Meng in the semi-finals on Thursday (July 29), in a tense fight that saw her clutching her left thigh and requiring medical attention during the fourth game.
She reached the last eight of this event at the 2016 Rio Games, where she made her Olympic debut. The only Singaporean to clinch an individual table tennis medal is her teammate Feng Tianwei, who took home a bronze in the 2012 London edition.
With Singapore still in awe of her journey, here are some facts about the table tennis player.
In 2006, at 17 years old, she left China to join the Singapore Table Tennis Association.
Yu was behind Feng, Li Jiawei and Wang Yuegu in the pecking order for Beijing 2008 and London 2012, where they won the women’s team silver and bronze, respectively.
In 2014, she could not get out of bed for a month, and pulled through Rio 2016 with injections and platelet-rich plasma treatment, before undergoing surgery to fix a torn labrum.
In March this year, she had to be escorted on a wheelchair to board her flight home after her back injury flared up during the WTT Star Contender in Doha, Qatar.
In her spare time, she reads up on related products online.
Yu has said they help her stand out and give her a psychological boost. At Tokyo 2020, she has items like a gold necklace, earrings, a bracelet, and three rings on her fingers.
Text: David Lee/The Straits Times