A lot has changed for table tennis veteran Eugene Wang since his first Olympics.
Wang, 38, made his Olympic debut at London 2012, mere weeks after he received his Canadian citizenship. Originally from Shi Jiazhuang in China, Wang has lived in Aurora since 2018.
He has also had a daughter, Everly, with his wife, Xuan Zhang, and started his own table tennis club, True North Table Tennis in Scarborough.
Speaking the day before he flies out to Paris, Wang said the Olympics actually affords him an opportunity for “some private time” and a break from his busy daily schedule training the next generation of table tennis stars at the club.
“The real schedule for myself, let’s say I want to train morning and afternoon and after that I can follow up, I can really do that there (in Paris), here I have to really squeeze my time to do that.”
“Sometimes I can just play on my phone and relax everything, not just the muscles, the body, but relax everything, I can actually do that. Here, I have to take care of the family, kids, or extra stuff with the club.”
“Every tournament is a vacation for me,” he laughed.
This will be Wang’s fourth Olympics in Paris, a city he is familiar with. Wang spent five years playing in the professional league in France, where he would play in tournaments in Paris about 10 times a year.
His wife and daughter are coming along to cheer him on, staying in a house in the city while Wang lives in the Olympic Village. Wang said he is looking forward to visiting the French capital with his family, perhaps including a trip to Euro Disney for his daughter.
“It’s not easy to bring such a young kid to travel around but you never know, it could be my last Olympics, so we decided to bring her to have a memory,” he said.
“For me and my wife, it’s more panic than excitement, for my kid, she has no clue where is Europe, where she has to go or what are the Olympics, but it’s for the memory when she grows up.”
Wang has managed two ninth-place finishes at the Olympics, in the men’s team event in 2019, and in the mixed doubles in Tokyo 2020.
He won gold at the Pan American Games in Lima in 2019 in the mixed doubles, plus a bronze in the singles. Across his three Pan American Games appearances, Wang has won seven medals.
Ahead of this Olympics, Wang said he has no specific goal in terms of how far he wants to make in the tournament, saying he plans to take each game “point by point.”
“It’s always an honour and exciting to be there. This time, I will say it’s already past my peak, all I have to do or expectations (for myself) — I don’t want to leave any regret there. So that’s why I am still pushing myself and why my schedule is quite busy. We’ll see.”
Will Paris be his last Olympics?
“It’s four years, you never know. I will cherish this one first, focus on this one, but you never know what will be tomorrow,” he said.
Wang will be in action for Canada starting Saturday.
