TAIPEI: Chinese Taipei's No 1 tennis player Chan Yung-jan has one birthday wish this year - to play the Olympics final on the day she turns 19.
"My birthday is August 17 which happens to be the last day of the tennis games and I do hope to play on that day," said Chan, who will make her Olympic debut in both singles and doubles in Beijing.
Chan Yung-jan. [Agencies] |
For the doubles, she will team up with 23-year-old Chuang Chia-jung. The pair won the WTA Rome International in May.
Chan currently ranks 71 in the world in singles and ninth in doubles, while Chuang is eighth in doubles.
To get into her best shape, Chan has been training with a team of French coaches and has been playing on the US and Canadian tours to familiarize herself with the hardcourt surfaces that will be used in Beijing.
"I want to push myself to the best condition and keep the mood of being in a competition before the Olympics," she told AFP before a training session in Taipei.
Chan and Chuang made a breakthrough in 2007 by reaching the Australian Open women's doubles final, although they lost the final in their Grand Slam debut to Zimbabwe's Cara Black and South Africa's Liezel Huber.
The duo, which was only playing in its third Tour-level event together and their first major, became the first from the island to play a major final.
They followed it up by making the US Open final the same year.
Chinese Taipei has never won an Olympic tennis medal and hopes are high that Chan and Chuang can make history in Beijing.
Chan, a native of Tungshih in central Taiwan, started learning tennis at six from her father Chan Yuan-liang, who serves as a coach for the Chinese Taipei Olympic tennis team.
But she nearly gave up her favorite sport four years later when the island's worst earthquake in September 1999 left her family in financial stress.
"The quake destroyed our house and we suffered great losses. My mother asked me at that time if I wanted to contiune playing tennis, my answer was positive," Chan recalled.
"She then decided to move the family to Taipei and give me three years to try."
Chan, whose career-high singles ranking was 50 in June 2007, said this life-changing experience helped her to be brave and better cope with stress.
Chinese Taipei is not known as a tennis powerhouse and before Chan its best-known player was Wang Shi-ting, who won six tour titles and reached a career-high singles ranking of 26 in 1993.
Wang played Grand Slams between 1992 and 1999 but never got beyond the third round.
In recent years the island has enjoyed a tennis boom with young players like Chan making their way toward to the top.
Yang Tsung-hua won the junior boys singles title at the French Open in June while Hsieh Su-wei became the island's first player to reach a Grand Slam fourth round for women's singles at the Australian Open earlier this year.
Besides Chan and Chuang, Chinese Taipei's top male tennis player Lu Yen-hsun will play the Olympic singles.
