Syria’s 12-year-old Hend Zaza is the youngest athlete at Tokyo Olympics
2020. Despite bowing out in the preliminary round of the table tennis event on
Saturday, Zaza said she considers just reaching the Games “an achievement”.

Zaza lost to Austria’s Liu Jia 11-4, 11-9, 11-3, 11-5.

Twelve-year-old Zaza shot to fame overnight in her war-ravaged country last
year when she qualified for Tokyo. She is the youngest Olympian since
11-year-old Carlos Front of Spain competed in rowing and 12-year-old Judit Kiss
of Hungary in the swimming pool.

“Reaching the Tokyo Olympics was already an achievement. I wasn’t asked to
win. I was asked to play well,” Zaza told Olympics.com.

Talking about her love for the sport, Zaza says that it was table tennis
that provided her an escape from all the suffering and pain of war and gave her
the strength to face the challenges of life.

“Table tennis gave me everything and taught be to be a strong human being,
a confident one,” says Zaza who was Syria’s flagbearer at the Olympics opening
ceremony on Friday.

“For sure, I wanted to win and take one or two matches, but hopefully in
the next Olympics,” says the youngster.

Zaza started playing table tennis in 2014. She is the second Syrian table
tennis player to compete at the Olympics after Heba Allejji.

“Since 2016, I had the dream of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics and I
trained hard,” says Zaza who earned her right to be at the Olympics by winning
the Western Asia Olympic Qualification Tournament in Jordan in February last
year.

The delay caused by the pandemic came as a boon for her and gave her time
to work on her skills. “Because of the delay, I trained more and participated
in training camps, benefitted more. My performance improved,” she said.

Speaking of her war-torn country, Zaza says that while it was difficult for
her to make it to the Olympics, “we want to show that even though we are in the
middle of the war, we must do something”.

Syria’s civil war has killed nearly 500,000 people, displaced millions and
ravaged infrastructure since it began in 2011 with the repression of anti-government
protests.