U.S. Olympians are often medal favorites in the events they compete in.
Not in table tennis, one of the few Olympic sports in which no American has ever won a medal.
In Paris, U.S. competitors are hoping for more exposure — and resources — after Kanak Jha made history by becoming the first American man to reach the round of 16 on Wednesday.
Jha, 24, who is ranked No. 120 in the world and trains and competes mostly in Germany, had to resort to crowdfunding to help support his career and his Olympic preparations.
He raised more than $29,000 through a GoFundMe account put together to help cover costs for training, travel, accommodation and hiring a private coach.
“It’s impossible to be a professional table tennis player living in the U.S. Financially, it’s impossible,” Jha told The Associated Press.
While there are well-established professional leagues both in Europe and Asia, the U.S. only launched its own league — Major League Table Tennis — last year after being founded by software entrepreneur and table tennis enthusiast Flint Lane.
“For the men’s side there were no real high-level training groups that you can train full time in,” Jha said. “Now there are also a few starting up, so it’s coming slowly, but you still cannot compare it with Asia and Europe, which have huge systems in place for the sport.”
Asian nations dominate table tennis, but the Europeans are also steps ahead of the United States. China has been the most successful nation since the sport was added to the Olympic program at Seoul in 1988.
Before Jha reached the round of 16, where he lost to Tokyo silver medalist Fan Zhendong, no U.S. men’s player had even made it to the round of 32 since Jimmy Butler at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
The best U.S. women’s result so far is a quarterfinal appearance by Wang Cheng in Beijing in 2008.
“It’s not easy,” U.S. national team coach Jun Gao told the AP. “You see other countries, they have a team, they have a physio, doctor… they have everything. And then we have nothing.”
Women’s player Lily Zhang, who lost in the round of 16 in Paris this week, said she “would love to see more being done for the sport” in the U.S. She works part-time — for her sponsor — to be able to make enough money to train and compete.
“It’s definitely not easy because we don’t really have a system to support professional players,” said Zhang, 28. “If you do choose to go down that path, you most likely have to go overseas, either to Europe or Asia, join the leagues there to be able to earn a living because you are not really able to make a career out of it in the U.S.”
USA Table Tennis said it has been taking steps to grow the sport and improve conditions for athletes back home. It said it “has been increasing funding and growing participation in the sport over the past few years,” and designated two national training centers for Olympic and Paralympic athletes as “the building blocks to our future success.”
Zhang, who is ranked 29th in the world, said one of the main challenges is not having the resources needed for athletes to travel to competitions, with the trips often being self-funded or provided by sponsors.
“I think we really need more exposure because a lot of people in the U.S. don’t really understand table tennis as a sport. They think of it more as like a hobby sport, a basement sport,” she said. “But I think what matters most is to have more exposure, more eyes, because once they actually get to watch it in person, I think that changes a lot of their minds and they realize how much it really takes. And I think it’s only starting.”
