In last week's Throwback Thursday, we covered the story of coach Wang Tao and Ma Wenge. This week we will have a look at a very experienced coach who said "Table tennis is his love forever" in his new book! He is Zhou Shusen. You may not recall who Zhou Shusen is but you must have heard of the Singaporean women's team defeating the Chinese team and walked away with their first ever world team champion in 2010 WTTC. Well, Zhou Shusen was the coach of the champion-winning team.
Hangzhou-born Zhou Shusen became a Chinese national team athlete in 1964. His brother Zhou Lansun was one of the "Five Tigers" in the Chinese team in the 60s while he himself was a practice partner. In 1974, he took the job as the national team coach and took up a new post as the head coach of Team Zhejiang in 1978. 3 years after coaching in Team Zhejiang, he had coached as the head coach of Team Beijing until 2008. He reached his all-time high in 2010 when he led the Singaporean women's team to top the podium at 2010 world championships. In his 43 years of coaching career, he has coached numbers of world-class athletes, namely Zhang Yining, Guo Yan and Ding Ning etc. One of his proudest achievements is having 5 athletes (Zhang Yining, Li Jiawei, Zhang Xueling, Liu Jia and Wu Xue) from Team Beijing participating in the main round of women's singles competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
His other achievements that people talk about the most is leading the Beijing women's team winning medals after medals at the National Games, the most prestigious domestic competition in China. The team won 3 consecutive team champion (2001, 2005 and 2009), 2 women's singles champion in a row (2005 and 2009 by Zhang Yining), 2 team silver (1993 and 1997) and 1 women's singles silver (2001 by Zhang Yining).
Nonetheless, Zhou Shusen took the Singaporean women's team to win a historic world team title in 2010. Interesting enough the champion-winning team he led defeated 2 athletes, Ding Ning and Guo Yan who used to train under Zhou Shusen in Team Beijing.
In his history, Zhou Shusen, led the Beijing women's team to 3 consecutive team gold at National Games in 2001, 2005 and 2009. Followed up this achievement, he took the Singaporean women from a non-contender to the world champion in 2010. Many may remember his achievements as a coach but he should be recognized as a table tennis person instead. As he has participated in every National Games, as an athlete in 1959 and 1965 and as a coach in the other Games and has devoted his life to table tennis. Despite aged 76, he told the press that table tennis has been part of his life and he has not planned for stepping down. Here is an interview conducted by CCTV 5 during the Games.
We hope he is able to accomplish great things with table tennis athletes and enthusiasts hoping to push the sport forward and enjoy table tennis as he did over the half century.
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