Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2011

It’s no fun being a child prodigy. The sports world is littered with the wreckage of broken teenage dreams. The great ones—Tiger Woods, Martina Hingis, David Beckham—get through it and rise to the top, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. While the media loves to pounce on new talent, they’re just as quick to hound them if they don’t live up to expectations. Many prefer to seize on errors—both sporting and personal—and crucify the young stars they previously tried to glorify (Jennifer Capriati, anyone?). Some journalists just won’t forgive failure.

Table-tennis star Ai Fukuhara gets plenty of stick from the Japanese media for not being the greatest player in the world—or even Japan. Sportswriters and broadcasters figured that when Ai-chan became the youngest player to earn a spot on the national team, the youngest Japanese athlete in the Asian Games, and the youngest ever Olympic table-tennis player, she would take the world by storm and lift the nation to sporting glory. Unfortunately, she failed to become a world-beater, and some people resent that.

As with Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova, the media have been quick to jump on Ai-chan (though perhaps not in the same way that they wanted to jump on Kournikova). Even her place in the history books has been threatened, after not one, but two 10-year-olds—Miu Hirano and Mima Ito—broke her record as the youngest player to win a match at the Japan Championships. Hirano, dubbed “Girl Genius” by the ever-imaginative Japanese media, bested Fukuhara’s record as the youngest competitor in the (junior) competition when she was just 8, and as the youngest senior competitor when she played in the mixed doubles last year. (Mind you, Fukuhara suffered even worse humiliation when I took three points off her in a mini-match at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan four years ago.)

The media have also harassed Ai-chan over her relationship with tennis star Kei Nishikori, and even her love for China. She spent so much time learning how to play table-tennis there that she’s become fluent in a northeastern Mandarin dialect, and is arguably Japan’s most prominent symbol in the country, even playing against President Hu Jintao. She still plays in China’s Super League, too.

So where has it all gone wrong for Ai-chan? Well, quite simply, it hasn’t. She’s playing fantastic table tennis, and last year came close to winning the Kuwait Open, overcoming three fellow Top 10 players—including former world champion Guo Yue—before losing 4-3 to Liu Shiwen in the final. She has also won two ITTF doubles titles with new Japan champion Kasumi Ishikawa. At 22, Ai-chan is probably playing the best table-tennis of her career, but now the new darling of the circuit, 17-year-old Ishikawa, is grabbing all the attention.

That probably suits Fukuhara fine. She’ll still get plenty of attention from the media at this month’s Asian Cup in Yokohama, but there’ll also be other stars there to distract them. At 22, Ai-chan is no longer cute enough to make the front pages of the sports newspapers, but I’m sure she’ll settle for some decent headlines on the back.

Asian Cup
March 26-27, 9:30am. ¥2,000. Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium. Tel: 046-848-7492.