Table tennis player Zeina Shaban, 20, who is studying Economics and Management at the College, has a specific tactic for keeping her nerves at bay when taking on the world’s best: ‘I won’t even look at my opponent. I’ll pretend they’re not there’, she explains. ‘It’s a high speed game and you have to be strong mentally. The competitor uses the usual tactics of grunting to try to put you off, but I do not see nor hear anything surrounding the table – I just focus on the ball and play’.
Zeina has been playing table tennis since she was seven and is something of an icon in her home country, Jordan. She was voted Jordan’s athlete of 2003 following a nationwide poll and has earned numerous titles. Today, she balances her studies with her training programme. ‘I wanted to have a good degree to fall back on so I’ve continued my studies’, she says. ‘I’m really looking forward to competing. I qualified for the second round at Athens, so I hope to at least achieve the same at Beijing’.
Royal Holloway, University of London
22 years old is appropriate and normal in our region and the age difference between them is also acceptable.
