Former Chinese table tennis champion Deng Yaping is not content to rest on her laurels.
"If titling at the Asian Games, the World Table Tennis Championships and the Olympic Games was the grand slam in my table tennis career, finishing my courses at Tsinghua University, undergraduate studies at Nottingham University and doctoral research in Cambridge will be another grand slam in my life," Deng Yaping said in 2005.
Now, with her doctoral research completed, Deng has achieved that second "grand slam."
As one of China's greatest athletes, Deng Yaping dominated the world table tennis courts for nearly a decade. She won four Olympic gold medals in Atlanta and Barcelona and took the title at the World Table Tennis Championships nine times.
Now that she has retired from both the courts and the classroom, she has volunteered her talents on the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, as an organizer for the Olympic Village.
Unlike her days as an athlete, Deng Yaping has complex feelings and goals as the deputy director of the Beijing Olympic Village.
"When I was an athlete, my highest goal was to win gold medals and achieve the best results," Deng says, "but once I retired from sports and moved on to do management for the Beijing Olympics, I thought more about how to build a platform through which all the athletes around the world could have better performances."
Deng said the International Olympic Committee wants more people around the world to participate in the movement for peace and unity, a theme which is realized through the global torch relay.
At final count, the ongoing torch relay will include a total of 21,880 torch bearers, the most in Olympic history, the official Web site of the Chinese Olympic Committee says.
Deng has run in the Olympic torch relay four times: in Sydney 2000, Salt Lake City 2002, Athens 2004, and Beijing 2008.
"Once you have the chance of carrying the torch, you pass the Olympic spirit from your hands to others' to deliver peace, so this is a very special and emotional moment," Deng says. Of all of her torch relay experiences, this is the most dear, because she ran the torch in Olympia, the founding spot of the Olympics – and because this year's Olympics will be held in her own country.
With the August Olympics approaching, Deng will be even busier in the next several months, which forces her to spend more time away from her two-year-old son.
"He is still too young, and he doesn't know what I'm doing," Deng said, "But when he grows up, he will be proud of me, because I've been working for the Olympic Games, not only for Chinese people, but for people around the world."
(CRI April 29, 2008)