ITF

134 S un: I do remember every detail of the last point. I'm very good at the baseline, and Li Ting is in front of the net. Me and [ Virginia] Ruano Pascual were locked in a furious baseline exchange and after a rally her return had gone out. Watching the Chinese national flag rising with a medal, that's beyond words. Because you are not yourself anymore, you have the hope of so many people supporting you. Honestly speaking, we didn't really feel the atmosphere when we were playing as we put 100 percent of ourselves into the game. I had never felt that way, that nothing could disturb me apart from the match itself. After the match they told us that some table tennis players like Zhang Yining and Wang Nan were in the stadium and watched the game along with Cui Dalin, the leader of the Chinese Olympic team, but we didn't really know that, not at all. I heard that [Juan Antonio] Samaranch and the Queen of Spain were also there, they hadn't expected that we could win the match. We ourselves didn't expect we could go through to the final before the Olympic Games started. We thought it would be good to win one match; two wins would be a surprise. It made a huge difference in my life. My family is not a wealthy one, so I just made the situation better, changed to a bigger apartment after coming back. There were lots of business activities and interviews. I hang out and have something to eat with my friends, and they know that I'm an Olympic champion, so they will ask me something about that usually. From my point of view, it's a very special memory in my whole life. L i: It was the preparation before the Olympic Games that was the hardest part of it. At the beginning of 2004, we were in very good condition, we went through to the Miami semifinals. It was a good match for us until we retired because of my knee ligament injury. After coming back, we put our bodies on the training court very soon instead of taking a break as we want to be seeded in the Olympics. We then headed to Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Because of the negative impact of the injury, we didn't play well. It bothered me a lot. In Qingdao where we were training for the Olympic Games, I got my ear cut by some scissors and my ankle was injured as well, and we hadn't done any training sessions for one to two weeks before we got on the plane to Greece. I was excited, very excited, very happy to win the first Olympic tennis gold medal for China. The reason I play tennis is because I like it and the Olympic Games is the biggest stage, which means it was always a dream for me to become the Olympic champion when I was very young. However, when I was 17 or 18 years old, after I really knew the whole tennis world, I thought I was too small. I realised that it was like a mission impossible for us. I just keep my medal in a box at home but I don't really check it out. I think these things are old stories and it's important to return to normal life. After becoming Olympic champion I got more exposure which gave me more opportunities to know some new people, do lots of interviews, things like that. But that's it. I'm still me. SUN TIAN-TIAN & LI TING China, P.R. It was always a dream for me to become the Olympic champion.

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