What Happens When The Less-Than-Cool World Of Professional Table Tennis Gets To Show Off A Marketable Athlete?
Let's take nothing away from Biba Golic. But the fact that this 27-year old Serbian who lives in Chicago has been dubbed "the Anna Kournikova of table tennis" is just, well, weird.
Don't misunderstand. Biba - her real name is Biljana, but no one ever calls her anything except Biba - does have a distinct Kournikovappeal. She has a charming Eastern European accent; lovely, golden hair and an undeniably fit figure. And in table tennis, a sport that, according to the style setters at GQ, "doesn't require good looks or youth or even a sense of fashion," Biba is a true standout. While most other female players insist on competing in those hideous, shapeless plastic shorts and matching tops, Biba has taken to clingy spandex minidresses. Male fans recognize the difference. They grin goofily when Biba takes the table. One fan even authored a "Marry me, Biba" sign at a recent match.
"I don't know what to think of it," says Biba, who is in the United States to pursue the college degree that eluded her in her war-torn homeland. "But I'm flattered."
Still, here's the thing. Biba Golic is no Anna Kournikova. For one thing, Anna succeeded off court even as she failed on it. But Biba has had substantial success on court. She's the number-two ranked female collegiate player in the country, is in the top 10 overall among women playing in the United States, and ranks 209th among women worldwide - that's good for a U.S.-based player. For another thing, if you call Biba the Anna Kournikova of table tennis, then, by extension, you suggest that table tennis itself, if played by attractive athletes, can be, you know, sexy.
Ping-Pong? Sexy? You cannot be serious.
But a company called - no kidding - Killerspin is absolutely serious. The Chicago-based marketer of table tennis equipment - let's call them "the Nike of table tennis" - is Biba's main sponsor. And it's banking that Biba can both help pump up product sales and bring pro table tennis to a broader audience in the United States.
To that end, the company backed Biba's move this year to Chicago from Texas, where she had been attending Texas Wesleyan University (she's now studying at Illinois Institute of Technology on a scholarship). "Biba got a scholarship at Texas Wesleyan," says Killerspin president Robert Blackwell Jr. "But they made her wear ugly clothes. So I brought her to Chicago."
He's joking. A little. The clothes were ugly. But, now, with her new, slinkier Killerspin digs, the sultrier Serb's image has started popping up everywhere Killerspin stamps its brand. There's Biba sitting on a Killerspin RAD playing table. (It's rad! Get it?) Whoa, there's Biba's belly button peeking out on a poster for a Killerspin Extreme tournament. (Table tennis ... to the extreme! Now that's really rad.)
In most other sports, of course, it would hardly be revolutionary to sell a female athlete by putting her in short skirts and shirts that flash a hint of navel. Pro beach volleyball doesn't even give its players that much clothing. But for table tennis, selling sultriness is new ground. And the sport's most die-hard supporters aren't sure what to make of it.
Biba sitting pretty
"Some have said Biba is our most marketable player," says Larry Hodges, editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine. "Others disagree. It's a tough call. There's no answer unless we actually get results." Results. You want results? One Internet blogger counted the results last year after a Killerspin tournament featuring Biba aired on ESPN2. He found that hundreds of ambitious Googlers had gone online hoping to find the same types of images associated with "Biba Golic" that one might find associated with "Paris Hilton." They must have been disappointed. Not only has Biba not posed in Maxim, she doesn't seem to know what it is when I mention it.
What she does know is that she's been complimented on her looks throughout her career, including the 15 years she played in Europe. "But it is different now, here," she says, giggling with a shyness that belies her game, an aggressive, attacking style usually employed by men. "I have never had anything happen to me like what is happening in the United States."
No one else has, either. To be sure, it's not all Biba. But the Killerspin events Biba has participated in have been the best-attended table tennis tournaments ever in the United States. Though the game has been a solid spectator draw for decades in Europe and Asia, where the players are vastly better, it's never really gotten out of the rec room in this country. No American has ever medaled in table tennis at the Olympics, and Forrest Gump is the only American to claim a noteworthy world title. And he wasn't real. Thing is, few Americans, including many of those who Ping-Pong regularly, appreciate the professional game's complexity and athleticism.
"The sport hasn't been marketed very well here," says Killerspin's Blackwell. "You'd be surprised at how many people come out of their basement and think they can go to the Olympics in table tennis. And most of those people would have almost no chance to even return Biba's serve."
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TOPSPIN
He's right. Biba is better than you. She's had a lot more practice at it. Biba started playing at age 10, when her father, a table tennis coach, first taught her the game. By her teens, she was already one of Yugoslavia's state-sponsored players. You read that right: state-sponsored. See, in Europe, table tennis is different. Hundreds, thousands, pack arenas to watch the best players and teams compete in what are lightning-fast battles of reflexes. Stars are born. The mug of Austrian Werner Schlager, one of the most popular players, even adorns an Austrian postage stamp. He joins Pope John Paul II as one of the few living people to share that distinction. Ping-Pong, or table tennis - many pros hate the trademark term for the game, considering it a slur - is just that popular there.
Biba and her teammates certainly profited from that popularity. Yugoslavian taxpayers underwrote everything from their housing to travel expenses. They paid back the country with wins.
But just as Biba was turning 17 and her game was reaching its zenith, the wars that split Yugoslavia put her career on hold. "My country wasn't recognized internationally," Biba says. "So we couldn't compete. That meant I kind of skipped two years in my career, which were very important. I think my career would have gone in a different direction had I not skipped those two years."
She struggles for the words to put that loss in proper perspective, given the suffering of others during those wars. The words don't come easily in English. Finally she says. "Well, it was a disappointment for me, but ..."
Biba at the table
When the fighting settled down, and Europe again accepted athletes from the former Yugoslavia, Biba enrolled in college. She found the travel demands in Europe, though, were a bad match for studies. So she came to the United States and landed first at Texas Wesleyan University, which has one of the best table tennis programs in the country and is one of just a handful of colleges offering athletic scholarships to table tennis players. "Biba is a very talented player, one of the best," says Christian Lilleroos, Biba's coach at Wesleyan. He adds, virtually in the same breath, "But she needs to get stronger. She needs to lift more weights."
Biba might disagree. "I practice every day," Biba counters. "I lift weights. Not too many weights. I have to really train to be mentally ready because this is a sport you must play with a lot of feeling."
PLAY IT AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH FEELING
Yeah, feeling. Feeling is actually a problem. Maybe the biggest problem that Brand Biba faces, and definitely one of the biggest problems table tennis has, is trying to expand its U.S. audience.
Consider this: To hit that little celluloid ball with optimum power, players have to crouch low, keeping their waists aligned with the height of the table, about 30 inches. That's probably the height of your office desk. The ball, meanwhile, bounces by so fast that there's virtually no time to think, making table tennis almost entirely a game of instinct.
The picture that emerges is this: Two (or four) players facing off across a small table, both crouched down, knees bent, both concentrating intensely so as to speed their reflexes. Clenched muscles, intense concentration. From a spectator's vantage, it doesn't look like the players are having fun. And, worse, even if it looks athletic - what with the muscles and the crouching and the quick hands and all - it's hardly sexy. Unfortunately, that's true even when you're playing in a short skirt.
Then again, maybe the skirt really isn't the point anyway. "Table tennis is hard work, hard to play," Biba says. "But it is very good to win."
And there's nothing weird about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment