Summary: <p>This week we watched Top Spin, a harrowing tale of three young athletes training for the 2012 London Olympics. </p> <p>The story follows Ariel Hsing, 16, Lily Zhang, 15, and Michael Landers, 17. Each has their own unique skill set, style of play, training regimen, support system and schooling. That to me was one of the coolest parts. They’re all training for the same thing, but the paths to get there are totally unique. </p> <h2>A few things we forgot to mention</h2> <p>Lily is the lone veteran on the US table tennis team this year at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She won in the first round at Rio in 4 straight games and in the second round she swept an athlete from Portugal in 4 games. Zhang enters round 3 having won 8 straight games and will take on Hyowon Suh today at 9:00AM (8/8).</p> <p>We didn’t even touch on the table tennis night club that Michael frequents. In New York, he heads to a club called SPiN that is part club and part table tennis exhibition arena. Athletes compete as onlookers imbibe and take in the sport. A bit bizarre, but overall a really cool way for Michael to work on his craft.</p> <p>The US is not really known at all for their table tennis. The media propaganda train would have you believe that, because of Forrest Gump, we must be amazing, but across the world we are not known at all for this. In fact, the United States has <em>never</em> medaled in table tennis. Take a look at this chart from Wikipedia. Yeah, China is pretty good. </p> <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_in_table_tennis"><img src="http://thatonesportsshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Untitled-2.jpg" alt="Wikipedia listing of top medal winners by country in table tennis at the Olympics." width="636" height="412" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-585"></a></p> <p>Rewatchability: Yes, but would be even better as a continuation.<br> Table Tennis Action: 4.5/5 – Some of this is shot beautifully and the slow-motion of serves to see the spins was awesome. </p> <p>John Overall: 4/5 Shnozzolas<br> Geoff Overall: 3.5/5 Shnozzolas</p>
