Australian table tennis player Jian Fang Lay is one of the best reasons to love the Tokyo Olympics

The basic plan was unlikely: late at night, in the winter, the 48-year-old played table tennis in a deserted stadium in an event that no one really wanted to happen.

But the player happened to be Australian Jian Fang Lay, and the Tokyo Games suddenly felt less sleepy.

You are not alone if you have never heard of Lay, even though you should know him better.

On Saturday, she became the first Australian woman to compete in the six Olympics and did light work for Daniela Fonceca of Cuba in the early morning races.

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The 156th-place veteran in the one-night round received Debora Vivarelli, an Italian from the 70s, who had a right-handed shaking handle and all the physical benefits when she was 20 years younger than her opponent.

To be honest, Vivarelli was lost.

Yet the Italian was also an energy package for the nervous system.

Lay, who gave herself to the nerves in her first games in Sydney in 2000, is now the mother of two teenagers and well over such feelings. He dropped in the first match: 11-7 in six hectic minutes.

When Lay led 2-1, Vivarelli had both the pace and the playing point even for the race. You felt he would do it, and you feared Lay’s chances if he did.

But Lay squeezed him and the mistakes came, and soon it was more than a 4-1 victory for the Australian in 31 minutes.

It was not a medal. It won’t make accents in two weeks. Probably many Australians didn’t even look at it.

But it was a victory of old-fashioned experience and a victory for athletic enthusiasts.

The grip of Lay’s pen holder, born in China, is not so unusual in table tennis, but the way he rotates his bat during the exchange of points between the bats ’smooth and pimple gums is completely unusual.

At times, technology has dropped even experienced opponents. Here Vivarelli looked as if he had been asked to solve the Rubix cube with one hand.

How did Lay even get into the sixth game? The withdrawal of the younger competitor helped, true, but few on the Australian team fit better into the amateur ideas of past Olympics than our table tennis stars.

When Lay first underwent surgery in Sydney, other sports benefited from patriotic funding. No table tennis; its governing body could not even afford a full-time coach.

In Lay’s birthplace, a third of the population plays. In Australia, the Olympics are often trained in their garage.

Prior to London 2010, Lay still stood in the shadow of his more famous teammate Miao Miao.

When the pair participated in their fourth race, Miao summed up his frustration with the team’s preparation: ‘‘ There’s no preparation, ’” he told The Age magazine.

“There’s no training camp. There’s no money for anything. There are no foreign tournaments where we can prepare. How can we compete? We can’t. It’s sad. Because I have to work rather than train, I’m not better than I should have been.”

And nothing changed much.

Lay might not have needed anything.

Tough self-criticism, he almost stopped several times before making a big time. As a young girl in China, she fled after school to avoid her lessons, only attracted by her father.

When she moved to Australia in 1994, her husband Jorgen, who has also served as her coach, had to talk about retirement.

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Yet by the end of this decade, he was a national duel and a double champion, and he has never given a boost.

How far does he go from here? The medal is a pipe stream, even though he already has a sack game of Commonwealth games, and nothing spoils him.

The only other reason to play is to love the game.

What a funny reminder that such awards are not consolation prizes.