Nan WANG

Just three table tennis players have managed to win four Olympic gold medals, Deng Yaping, Zhang Yining and Wang Nan. These three have dominated women’s table tennis for successive periods, with Wang succeeding Deng, and Zhang replacing Wang at the top of the pantheon. Wang Nan was ranked number one in the world for almost four years between 1999 and 2002, and she won all the major titles in that period, including the singles and doubles title at the 2000 Olympics. At the next two Olympics, she won two more golds, in the doubles event (with Zhang) and the 2008 team event. In singles, she was defeated in the 2004 quarter-finals, and in the 2008 final, losing out to Zhang. At the World Championships Wang has won no less than 15 titles, three in singles, five in doubles, six in the team event, and one in mixed doubles. Wang ended her career after the Beijing Olympics, at which point she had already been enshrined in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Hall of Fame for several years.