Rio 2016 – One to watch: Li Xiaoxia leads China’s table tennis hopes

Table Tennis is one of those curiously widespread sports that almost everyone has played at sometime in their lives but is seen on television when the Olympic Games come into view on their four yearly orbit.

For those whose last whiff of bat rubber and plastic ball was in the parish hall or the school gym, table tennis has changed at the top level. Now it's one of those faster-than-the-eye-can-see events that when watched being played by somebody like China's gold medal winner from 2012, Li Xiaoxia, in round three of the women's singles on Monday (2.0pm), is an entirely different game.

Scoring now goes to 11 points rather than the old 21 and bats and athletes, like most other instruments of sport, going hi tech.

In past years the sport has had to decrease the speed at which the ball travels for viewer purpose. People just couldn’t follow the movement.

Today in the Riocentro Pavillion in Rio Li is in the draw along with USA's hope Lily Zhang. Zhang, who is only 20-years-old, won a bronze medal at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games and a bronze in the women's singles at the 2015 Pan American Games.

But it is the Chinese everyone will be watching. Not unlike the Kenyan runners, Chinese players are also on the rosters of other countries.

South Korea’s top female table tennis player, China-born Jeon Ji-hee, has an easy explanation for why she left her country of birth to compete in Rio.

“There are way too many good players in China,” she said before the Games began. “It’s extremely hard to make it to the national team.”

China has won all but four gold medals since Seoul. Before the 2012 Olympics in London, a rule change allowed each country to put forward just two players in singles. It didn’t stop the Chinese juggernaut. They won all the gold and silver medals for singles, leaving bronze for the rest of the world.