The Chinese Olympic stars were not told of Grandma’s death before the time after Tokyo

• The Chinese table tennis player knew his grandmother was not dead until he returned from the Olympics.
• Sun Yingshan’s grandmother died in April when a table tennis star was already in training camp.
• The 20-year-old won a gold and silver medal in his first appearance at the Olympics.

A Chinese gold medal table tennis player was kept in the dark about his grandmother’s death until he returned home from the Tokyo Olympics.

The South China Morning Post reports that Sun Yingshan’s grandmother died in April, but the 20-year-old was already in training at the time and was not told the news.

The SCMP reports that Sun’s family chose not to tell him about the death of a relative so he could focus on his goal of winning Olympic gold in his first games.

It is unclear how Sun will react to the news about four months after his death.

In Tokyo, Sun won gold in the team competition and silver in the doubles, twice winning 20-year-old Japanese Mima Ito, who is a close friend.

In the women’s singles competition, Sun defeated his compatriot Chen Meng 4-2 when he won Ito in the semi-finals.

Sun won 3-1 against Ito in the top five of the finals in the second match to help China win gold in the women’s team competition.

His strong performances in the games made him rise to second place on the International Table Tennis Federation’s world list, and only Chen is now ahead.

After the Olympics, Sun was critical of his performance in Tokyo, even though he achieved two medals at the Olympic debut.

“I give myself 85 points out of 100” he told the CGTN.

“I’m still sorry about the doubles final. My goal was to win gold, but I only got it with silver, so I have to deduct 15 points from my performance.

“I think it will remind me in the future to set higher standards for myself and do better.”