張瑞

English

Zhang Rui was born on 25 January 1979 and, after starting out as a table tennis player from Liaoning in mainland China, went on to represent Hong Kong and is now a coach with the Hong Kong, China women's table tennis team. As a player she partnered former China international Wang Nan to win the women's doubles at the 9th National Games and later competed internationally for Hong Kong. In 2009 she began coaching the Hong Kong team and became a full-time coach in 2011, and she has spent more than a decade developing the sport in the territory. She has long served as the head coach of the women's team, known for a rigorous approach that stresses players' psychological preparation. Among the players she has guided is Doo Hoi-kem, who joined the Hong Kong Sports Institute as a 15-year-old full-time athlete under Zhang's charge; Zhang required her to keep a weekly training diary and do long-distance running, and comforted her during a run of defeats at the 2014 World Junior Championships. Zhang has led the Hong Kong women's team at world championships and Asian Games and has helped the women's side win world team championship medals while based at the Sports Institute. She has often spoken about how Hong Kong's model of integrating education and elite training differs from the mainland's. She travelled with the Hong Kong delegation as a table tennis coach at both the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games and the Paris 2024 Olympics.