Ma Long: From Anshan Prodigy to Six Olympic Gold Medals
He was left out of China's singles team for London 2012, then won back-to-back Olympic singles titles and three straight world championships.
The early rise
Ma Long was born on 20 October 1988 in Anshan, in China's Liaoning province. He won both the Asian and the World Junior Championships, and at 17 he became a world champion as a member of China's team at the 2006 World Team Championships in Bremen. His early coaches included Ma Kai Xuan, a former national team coach, and he later trained under Qin Zhijian.
Before he turned 22, Ma had reached 11 finals on the ITTF World Tour and won eight of them. He also won two Asian Cup titles and two World Tour Grand Finals.
The setbacks
Ma held the world number one ranking for long periods between 2010 and 2014, but the biggest singles titles kept escaping him. He lost in the semi-finals of the World Championships in 2009, 2011 and 2013, each time to his compatriot Wang Hao. National team coach Liu Guoliang said publicly that Ma had all the tools but sometimes lacked mental toughness at major events.
In 2012, after a 560-day winning streak, his form dipped. He lost to Japan's Koki Niwa at the Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament and to Lee Sang-su at the Korea Open. China did not select him for the singles at the London Olympics, where he won gold in the team event. Meanwhile his rival Zhang Jike completed a career Grand Slam.
The breakthrough
After his third defeat to Wang Hao in 2013, Ma won the China Open, a third Asian Championships title and the China National Games, beating Fan Zhendong in the final. At the 2014 World Team Championships in Tokyo he did not lose a game, and he received the Victor Barna Award as the tournament's best player.
His first world singles title came in Suzhou in 2015, when he beat Fang Bo in six games. He won the title again in Düsseldorf in 2017, beating Fan Zhendong in a seventh game, and in Budapest in 2019, beating Sweden's Mattias Falck 4-1.
Olympic champion, twice
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Ma beat defending champion Zhang Jike 4-0 (14-12, 11-5, 11-4, 11-4) in the singles final. The gold medal made him the fifth male player to complete the career Grand Slam of Olympic, World Championships and World Cup singles titles. He also won team gold in Rio.
Five years later in Tokyo, he beat Fan Zhendong 4-2 in the final to win the Olympic singles title for a second time, and added another team gold. He is the only male player to have completed the career Grand Slam twice.
Six golds and a new role
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Ma was one of China's flag bearers at the opening ceremony and won a fourth team gold. His six Olympic gold medals, two in singles and four in team events, are the most won by any table tennis player and the most won by a Chinese athlete.
He was ranked world number one for a total of 64 months, including 34 months in a row from March 2015. He also won the World Cup three times, in 2012, 2015 and 2024.
Ma withdrew from the ITTF world rankings on 31 December 2024. In April 2025 he was appointed a vice-president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association.
