A golden opportunity

After overcoming great odds to twice reach the pinnacle of Paralympic ping-pong, Zhao Shuai is aiming to cap his career with success in Tokyo, Ye Zizhen reports.

The 2004 Olympic Games was very special. It saw the world's premier sporting competition return to Greece, the country of its birth, 108 years after the first modern Olympics were first held there.

The year would also turn out to be special for Zhao Shuai－life-changing, in fact－as that was the year he embarked on a journey that would lead him to his own gold medal glory, not once but twice.

In the year of the Athens Games, Zhao was just 10 years old, and what made his entry into the sports arena all the more remarkable was that, at the age of 3, he had lost his left arm in a motor vehicle accident.