A 61-Year-Old is in the Olympics Harvesting Souls Half Her Age
For sure, you can laugh at the Olympics for having some ridiculous sports. Go ahead. Do your worst. The fact they have competitions like Handball, Air Pistol, and Gymnasts dancing around with ribbons deserves all your mockery. Just be sure and save some for Break Dancing (introduced for the first time in Paris) and Race Walking, which looks less like a sport and more like 50 people all trying to hold it in while the turtle's head is poking out:
Because it's a sad joke that the medals they award for events look just like the ones they gave to Jesse Owens, (then) Bruce Jenner and the US Miracle on Ice Team.
But as you ridicule these laughable competitions, do not include Table Tennis. The Sport of Kings. The ultimate test of physical fitness. Of hand-eye coordination. Speed. Agility. Reaction time. And one of the few Olympic events where you can compete at a high level with a beer in your off hand. Dominated since time immemorial by people who had room in their basement or their den, and parents willing keep it clear of paint cans and laundry baskets. The game that has circumnavigated the globe, been involved in international diplomacy and helped Forrest Gump meet John Lennon.
And the Sport of Kings has its unquestioned Queen. Still slaying on the table. Striking fear into the hearts of her opponents. And who has the hardened arteries of her fellow Boomers swelling with pride:
Source (paywall) - As she unzipped her jacket, adjusted her knee strap and began stretching for her first table-tennis match of this Olympics, an odd sensation came over the most unlikely player on the floor.
Suddenly, Ni Xia Lian felt … the full weight of a nation on her shoulders. She knew that she would need to summon all of her experience to settle into the match.
As it turns out, she had more of that than anyone in the building. That’s because Ni, the grand duchess of Luxembourg table tennis, is 61 years old …
When she made her international debut in 1979, almost nobody in this year’s Olympic field was born. Ni won her first world championship in 1983, and her first-round opponent here was born in 1993—which makes her younger than Ni’s son.
“I’m a table-tennis grandma,” says Ni, who is also a six-time Olympian. …
She retired and unretired before Michael Jordan. Then she did it again. In fact, she was in her prime before table tennis was even an Olympic sport.
These days, Olympians half her age say they can’t quite believe that Ni is still here. …
“I have double the age,” she says, “and double the experience.”
And to that all I can add is, as the Zoomers say, YASSS QUEEN:
Take that, punks. People like Ni will tell you that age is just a number. And she'll tell you so is 11 while winning by at least two as she mops the table with your bitchass, Whippersnapper. Every time she gets a colonoscopy they find chunks of opponents from five Olympics ago in her lower intestines. She's forgotten more wins than her opposition has had. And also, where she left her phone. She might not know how to set the DVR for 60 Minutes, but by gum she knows how to land a serve on the back line where it's impossible to return.
Unlike anyone she's going up against, she can truthfully say she watched the Moon Landing. And the original series run of The Brady Bunch. Saw Jaws and Star Wars in theaters. Drove a car before catalytic converters so it took regular gas. Used to read articles about how pollution is causing Global Cooling. Watched (then) Prince Charles marry (then) Lady Diana. Remembers when MTV debuted Michael Jackson's Thriller video. She can plausibly claim she got laid after a Queen concert when Freddie Mercury was on lead vocals. And intimidate the pampered little snowflakes on the other end of the table with stories about how she used to walk to school in the snow with a hot potato in her pocket to keep her warm and then have the potato for lunch. And the match will be over before it even began.
So thank you for the inspiration, my Queen. My Warrior Princess. These Old Balls are honored by your ping pong balls. Keep doing your generation proud.