WANG YUE GU
Date of Birth: 10 June 1980 is a China-born Singaporean table tennis player who is ranked among the top ten players in the world. Wang made her inaugural appearance on the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Pro Tour in June 2005 at the Volkswagen Korean Open in Suncheon, South Korea, where she and Sun Beibei took the silver medal in the women's doubles. On 24 September 2006, Wang achieved her first gold medal on the Pro Tour at the Japan Open in Yokohama. She repeated the feat against her compatriot Li Jiawei on 12 November at the ITTF Pro Tour German Open in Bayreuth. In June 2007, Wang helped Singapore sweep the women's team, women's doubles and mixed doubles gold trophies at the 17th Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships in Jaipur.
Representing Singapore for the first time at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, she was a member of the silver medal-winning women's table tennis team. This is the first time that Singapore has won an Olympic medal since Singapore's independence in 1965. The medal comes 48 years after Tan Howe Liang won the country's first and only medal to date, a silver in weightlifting at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
Wang Yuegu was born on 10 June 1980 in Anshan, Liaoning, People's Republic of China. In December 2004 she relocated to Singapore under the Foreign Sports Talent Scheme as this offered her more opportunities to prove herself at the international level. She subsequently became a Singapore citizen.
Career as national player
Wang made her inaugural appearance on the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Pro Tour in June 2005 at the Volkswagen Korean Open in Suncheon, South Korea, where she and Sun Beibei took the silver medal in the women's doubles. Later that year, she and Sun went on to take two more silvers in doubles matches at the Chinese Taipei Open and Volkswagen (China) Open.
In 2006, Wang came third in the women's singles at the ITTF Pro Tour Chinese Taipei Open held in Taipei, bettering that effort by taking the singles silver medal at the subsequent ITTF Pro Tour Korea Open. On 24 September, Wang achieved her first gold medal on the Pro Tour at the Japan Open in Yokohama, beating China's Guo Yan who was then the number one seed and ranked third in the world. The achievement brought her into the top ten of the women's world ranking list for the first time in her career. Wang repeated her gold-winning feat against compatriot Li Jiawei on 12 November at the ITTF Pro Tour German Open in Bayreuth. In June 2007, Wang helped Singapore sweep the women's team, women's doubles and mixed doubles gold trophies at the 17th Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships in Jaipur. As a singles player, she was ranked seventh in the world as of August 2008.
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