Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #133 - Li Xiaoxia

Li Xiaoxia

China

Table Tennis

Overall Ranks

#9 among Chinese Olympians

#6 among Table Tennis Players

#4 among Female Table Tennis Players

Olympic Results

2012

Singles - Gold

Team - Gold

2016

Singles - Silver

Team - Gold

Total

Events - 4

Gold - 3

Silver - 1

Li Xiaoxia was born on January 16, 1988 in Anshan, China, and began her training in table tennis as a young girl at one of China's national sports schools. She made her first World Championship appearance at age 18, and by 2008, at the age of 20, she became the #1 player in the world for the first time, not long after that year's Olympics had passed.

Even ranked #1, she only managed to take 3rd place in the 2009 World Championships, and second place in 2011, but she still qualified for the 2012 Olympic team. She entered the singles event as the #2 seed, and after being pushed to 6 sets by her first opponent, Ariel Hsing of the USA, she rolled through the remainder of the tournament, culminating with an upset of #1 seed Ding Ning in the gold medal match in 5 sets.

After that, the two medalists teamed up to sweep through the team event without losing a single set, earning her a second gold medal. The next year, she won her first World Championship, and she continued to be ranked among the world's best clear up until the following Olympics in 2016, where she again made the cut for both events.

This time, she was seeded #3 for the individual event, but that didn't stop her at all, as she didn't lose a single set on her way to a rematch with Ding Ning in the gold medal match. She led the final match 3 sets to 2 before Ding won the final two sets to take the gold, leaving Li with the silver even though she lost only 4 sets total in the entire tournament.

The team event went exactly as expected, with the dominant Chinese team blanking all opponents on the way to yet another gold medal, the third for Li in her 2 Olympic appearances. She announced her retirement soon afterward, but even with just 4 Olympic events, she easily established herself as one of the greatest Olympians of all time.