NANNING, South China - Fifty-one-old Zhang Xiaoling, the oldest of the Paralympics-bound Chinese athletes, will make a record sixth appearance at the Paralympic Games to open on Saturday.

Zhang Xiaoling, five-time Paralympic table tennis champion, trains in Xi'an of Northwest China's Shaaxi Province in this file photo taken on March 25, 2008. Zhang has competed in five consecutive Paralympics and won ten gold medals in total. She will compete in her sixth Paralympics in Beijing. [Xinhua]

Zhang, a native of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has never lost a gold in the 10 events - five individual events and five team ones - she had ever competed in since her debut at the Seoul Paralympics in 1988.

Zhang's love for playing table tennis began when she was little. The first table tennis ball she used was a sunken one discarded by others. She took it home and put it into hot water to make it recover. Later she made a pair of rackets for herself with wood.

Every day after school, she played table tennis against wall, which deeply touched her mother who later bought her a pair of rackets with the money saved by selling eggs.

In 1976, before finishing secondary school, Zhang sprained her right foot and was not given a timely treatment, as a result the necrotic muscular tissue turned into malign tumour. Doctor said Zhang's life could only be saved by having the leg amputated. After that, she began to run a small shop near her home to make a living.

The disability in her body didn't make her give up her love for table tennis. She asked others to make a pingpong table and put it beside her shop. She played table tennis whenever there was no visiting customer, and Lu Yidong, her husband, served as her trial horse.

One day Zhang accidentally got to know the first national sport meeting for disabled persons was to be held, which made her very excited. Then she wrote a letter to Guangxi sports authorities to apply for participating in the competition.

But the deadline for registration had passed, so she had to give up the chance to compete in the first match. Touched by her story, officials from Guangxi encouraged her to attend the second national games for the disabled.

In 1985, Zhang participated in the first table tennis competition held in scenic Guilin in south China and began her journey to Paralympics. In 1987, she won the gold medal in women's singles event during the second national sport meeting for disabled persons.

In 1988, Zhang won the gold medal in the 8th Paralympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.

In order to practise her wrist's strength, Zhang made a special pair of iron rackets. She also invented the practicing way of "using a ball to hit other ones put in the opposite side on the ping-pong table". After years of such practice she became more and more competitive.

Before a match, she always does a lot of practice for a long time. So the artificial limbs would become loose and could not be buttoned with her body tightly. She had to replace it with a new pair.

During the three-month training before the opening of the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games, Zhang changed her artificial limbs three times. She got up at 6 a.m. and came back at midnight.

"She has changed totally 20 artificial limbs in the past two decades, and intensive practice rubbed off two centimeters of her leg remains," said Lu.

In the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games singles finals, Zhang, then 47, with two-thirds of her right leg cut off, won the gold medal by fighting  back from one set behind to upset 17-year-old Swede Marleen Bengtsson Kovacs.

Zhang wishes to win the golds in women's singles and team events in the Beijing Paralympic Games, but she has to accept the reality that she can not compete in the team event because of age.