Table Tennis at the 1988 Seoul Summer Games:

China had a monopoly on the leading players in the world. The #1 ranked player was 1987 World Champion He Zhili and #3 was Dai Lili. But neither player was chosen to play. Wallechinsky has noted that He was being punished for refusing to throw a match to another Chinese player during the 1987 Worlds. But their absence hardly mattered, as the Chinese swept the medals. The gold went to Chen Jing, who was only 21-years-old and had little international experience. Chen would later defect to Taiwan (Chinese Taipei in the Olympic Movement) and represent that nation at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. He Zhili would also emigrate, settling in Japan, where she took the name Chire Koyama, and she also competed at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. The bronze medalist in 1988 was Jiao Zhimin. The Korean press were all over her during the Seoul Olympics because of her romance with Korean doubles player Ahn Jae-Hyung. Jiao and Ahn did eventually marry and settled in Korea, but neither player ever competed again at the Olympics.