Tokyo Olympics: Minnie Soo fulfils childhood dream with table tennis team bronze
- Soo showed talent at the age of six, winning the ‘Most Potential Female Player’ award at the Hang Seng Academy
- The 23-year-old helped Hong Kong create history by winning both her matches in bronze medal play-off against Germany
Table tennis star Minnie Soo Wai-yam’s journey from a precocious two-year-old to Olympic heroine at the recent Tokyo Games was a fulfilment of a dream that was a long time in the making.
Soo thrilled Hong Kong fans when she won both her matches to steer Hong Kong past Germany 3-1 in the Olympic bronze medal meeting this month. At 23, Soo is one of the younger members of the Hong Kong team but she belied her years to play a pivotal part in the city’s unexpected run to Olympic success.
Soo started playing table tennis at the age of just two and a half and by the time she was six, her dream of making it on the world stage began. The youngster was named the “Most Potential Female Player” at the Hang Seng Table Tennis Academy. Her mother, Wu Mei-chu, said Soo, who already trained two hours a day and four days a week, wanted to be a Hong Kong team member.
At 15, Soo turned to full-time training to focus on a professional career, giving up her studies at one of the best secondary schools in the city – the Diocesan Girls’ School.
After capturing a team bronze medal for Hong Kong at the 2015 Asian Championships, Soo, by then 17, set her ultimate goal of winning an Olympic medal in Tokyo. At 23, her Olympic medal dream was realised at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.
“My father runs a table tennis training school after representing Hong Kong in the early 1990s and that’s why I started out in the sport so early,” said Hong Kong’s brightest new talent. “After training part-time for one or two years, I decided to commit to the sport full-time. Of course it was a big decision as I had to stop my studies which not many people would have done at such a young age.
Heroine Soo ‘never thought I could win’ as Hong Kong claim bronze
“But I got all the support from my family as they believed in me. Looking back now, it was a pretty cool decision.”
In her first few years turning full-time, Soo struggled.
“I was only 15 but had to play against much older and more mature players even in the junior events which allowed under-21 players to compete,” she said. “I started having doubts in my ability but fortunately my fellow teammates encouraged me to stay on. I was also eager to prove I did not make the wrong decision by turning full-time.
“It was not until a Pro Tour event when I defeated a former Chinese player, Wu Jiaduo, who played for Germany at that time that I started believing in myself. But even so, I was still mainly a bench [reserve] player in the team event, coming out to cheer loudly for my teammates when they scored an impressive point but no chance of ever playing.”
Despite her early setbacks, Soo gradually asserted herself as an attacking player on the international stage, especially in the junior circuit. Three times she finished runner-up at U21 World Tour events: at the 2017 India and Qatar Opens, and the 2018 Korea Open.
Soo also competed against other young players of the team such as Li Ching-wan and Mak Tze-wing for a place in the senior squad as the number three or four player in the team event in 2018. That turned out to be an important year for her as she solidified her position on the team by winning medals in three major international events.
First was the Team World Cup in London in February when Soo helped the team with a crucial victory 3-0 over then European reigning champions Romania in the quarter-finals.
Although Hong Kong lost to China in the next stage, they secured a bronze medal.
Hong Kong fall to China at World Team Table Tennis Championships
Hong Kong continued their journey at the team World Championships in Halmstad, Sweden three months later, taking on the all-mighty team China in the semi-finals and although a 3-1 defeat was an expected result, Soo, who just celebrated her 20-year-old birthday a month earlier, had a big reason to celebrate.
She beat Ding Ning, the then reigning Olympic and world champion, quite incredibly, in the opening tie. She won in three straight games 11-7, 11-6, 11-7 – a huge psychological boost for her.
The ITTF official website writer was stunned by the result and wrote: “I cannot think of any occasion since I first saw Ding Ning win the girls’ singles title at the 2005 World Junior Championships in Linz, Austria that Ding has been so soundly beaten by either a colleague or foreign adversary”.
Soo shared the same surprise of beating the world’s best player, saying at the time: “Before the match started, I thought to myself that I must not lose by a big margin … I’m really surprised with my performance; my performance was higher than usual, hers was lower than usual. I tried my best not to think that she is the Olympic and world champion, I tried to treat her as player and give my best.”
With the back-to-back success in two major events, there was no surprise when Soo was selected for the Asian Games in Jakarta later that year and she didn’t disappoint when she helped the women’s team win bronze.
The young gun dyed her hair pink before beating Ding Ning at the World Championships in Sweden, the same colour Soo decided that this was going to be her signature hairstyle prior to the Tokyo Olympic campaign.
“It was just a coincidence [the hair colour],” she said. “When I tried to find a new look before Tokyo, I decided to go for pink as I like the colour. But of course all my teammates now insist I should do the same highlight before any major events.”
Soo treasures the moment when she surprisingly beat two German players whom she never beaten before to help Hong Kong secure a team bronze medal in Tokyo.
“I never played the team singles in Tokyo before the bronze medal match,” said Soo, who was eliminated in her first Olympic individual singles match after losing to Maria Xiao Yao, of Spain, in the second round.
“But against Germany we had nothing to lose and my task was to win one of the two matches hoping our doubles team and Doo could also win their matches to give us an overall victory for the bronze.
“I studied German number one Han Ying in great detail before my match. Han is one of the best defensive players in the world and the victory over her boosted my confidence as I lost to her before in the European league. Their second player Shan Xiaona beat me at the 2020 German Open but we were already 2-1 up and needed just one more point to get an Olympic medal. I went for it against Shan before achieving mission impossible.”
Despite her dizzying success as a now Olympic medallist, Soo said it wasn’t time to feel complacent. “I am still not a top-class player like those Chinese mainlanders or even Ito Mima of Japan. The Tokyo Olympic Games is just one major step of my journey and it has helped me grow as a person and as a player.
“In fact, every big tournament such as the World Championships or the World Cup are the same. It’s experience that has helped me improve and become more mature. I am sure more opportunities playing at this high level will come in future.”
At senior level, Soo, the world number 30, has yet to achieve similar success in singles, her best result a silver medal finish at the 2019 Challenge Serbia Open.
She also plans to spend more time on her studies after winning an Olympic medal. “I have left school for a couple of years but I have never stopped studying. I’ll take public examinations such as the GCE in future and going to university is also one of my goals,” she said.
