Top-ranking Taiwanese table tennis star Chen Jing (陳靜) found the crucial last moments of yesterday's semifinals playoff match between her and a Chinese opponent disrupted by the unexpected entry of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and an entourage of approximately 75 heavily armed bodyguards.
"I've never seen anything like this before in all my years of officiating," said Zlatko Cardos, competition manager of the Women's Table Tennis World Cup held in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. "I asked them to wait one minute, just one minute for the players to finish, but they refused, citing `security reasons.'"
Hun Sen's arrival, punctuated by an accompanying brass band and a lengthy six-minute monologue in Cambodian that had no relation to the sporting event, could not have occurred at a worse time for Taiwan's Chen, who ranks fourth internationally in women's table tennis.
PHOTO: ANDY EAMES, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen and her Chinese opponent, Sun Jin (
Other players in the international tournament that attracted 17 of the world's top-ranked women's table tennis competitors were aghast at the unheard-of interruption.
"Unbelievable," said Nigeria's Olufunke Oshonaike, shaking her head in disbelief. "I've never seen this happen in organized competition before."
The interruption marked a turning point in Chen's game, with Sun quickly gaining momentum for victory, relegating Chen to fourth place overall in the tournament.
Sun's victory firmly cemented the top three slots in the competition to Chinese players.
Following Chen's defeat, the world's second-ranked player, Li Ju (
Chen had easily overcome her earlier opponents in the competition, cutting a swathe through lower-ranked players from Australia, Nigeria, Luxembourg and Korea.
"I don't feel particularly emotional about what I've done today," a confident Chen said on Saturday after routing Luxembourg's Ni Xia Lian for a place in the semi-finals. "I feel I should be winning."
However, in the end it was the speed and agility of her younger Chinese opponents that doomed Chen's hopes of ending the competition in the top three.
At age 31, Chen is approximately 10 years older than her Chinese rivals, though she adamantly denied the influence of age on her loss.
"I don't think the age of a player has any influence on their quality of play," she said.
In spite of the international field of players, the highlight of the competition was the Chen-Sun match, which was marked by emotional verbal showdowns between a 200-strong group of Chinese fans and a heavily outnumbered but spirited group of Taiwanese fans.
The Chinese supporters -- the majority of whom were students from a Phnom Penh Chinese school -- realized early in the competition exactly who they were there to support after they were censured by a group of Chinese reporters during Saturday's match for cheering for Chen during her match with Oshonaike.
"They are very confused," hissed a CCTV reporter when asked by the Times why the group was barred from showing support for Chen.
Chen, meanwhile, voiced concern over the competition's venue, Phnom Penh's crumbling Olympic Stadium, which has not been used for international competition since the 1966 Southeast Asian Games. "This place seems a little bit old for an international competition."
Although organizers went to heroic efforts to make the venue meet international standards, the lack of running water in the facility and the occasional mid-competition dives by some of the thousands of bats that nest in the stadium's roof were reminders of the challenges involved in holding international sports competitions in Cambodia.
"It's taken a lot, but this is up to international standards," Cardos said of the venue. "When bat droppings land on a table or near a paper, we wipe it up in five seconds and it's gone."
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