Bat used to beat Jiawei at Games fetches $80,000
THE bid stood at 190,000 yuan ($39,000).
But it was no ordinary table tennis bat. It belonged to world No1 table tennis player Zhang Yining.
Zhang's bat and the equipment of China's other Olympic gold medallists were up for auction at a charity dinner in Beijing's Grand Hyatt hotel on Tuesday.
Bidding for the bat opened at 30,000 yuan, and was topped 15 times until it hit 190,000 yuan.
But the auctioneer was not ready to close the deal. He asked Zhang to talk about her weapon, reported news portal Sina.com.cn.
She said: 'This bat has been with me for three months. During the women's singles semi-finals, I used it to beat Singapore's Li Jiawei.'
And immediately after that, a businessman at Table 41 doubled the last bid.
He offered 400,000 yuan ($80,000), a staggering 210,000 yuan more than the last bid, drawing thunderous applause from the other guests.
Li lost to Zhang 1-4 (11-9, 8-11, 10-12, 8-11, 5-11) in the semi-final two months ago. China went on to make a clean sweep of all the medals in the women's singles.
Hong Kong fan
When the businessman went on stage, he said he is a fan of Zhang and had specially flown from Hong Kong for the charity dinner.
Zhang's bat fetched the highest price for an individual athlete's equipment and upped the ante for the next item - the bat of men's singles paddler Ma Lin.
But the top offer for his bat was just 180,000 yuan.
In all, the charity dinner raised nearly 20 million yuan ($4 million). Eighty per cent of this will go towards helping victims of the Sichuan earthquake, with the rest going to a fund for Chinese athletes.
The highest bid that night was for a catalogue of Olympic stamps which was autographed by 23 gold medallists. It fetched one million yuan.
While Zhang's bat was the talk of the night, Chinese diving princess Guo Jingjing was the centre of attention.
The long-haired beauty, who wore a black spaghetti-strapped dress, auctioned off the swimsuit that she wore en route to her double-gold feat. It fetched 300,000 yuan.
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/st...78746,00.html?
--- E. Fermi (1901-1954)
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