Brazil's Hugo Calderano serves against Portugal’s Joao Geraldo during the World Team Championships Finals table tennis men's group match in Chengdu in China's southwestern Sichuan province on Oct 2, 2022. (PHOTO / AFP)

Yao Ming graced marquees for a decade in the NBA, spurring basketball’s growing popularity in China.

Table tennis needs the inverse: an eyecatching outsider to get the focus off China. Hugo Calderano fits the profile.

From Brazil, where table tennis is largely invisible, he has beaten many of China’s top players, and speaks seven languages including Chinese — he’s a player with the power to broaden the game’s appeal.

“It’s still probably one of the biggest issues we have out there that we have to tackle,” said Steve Dainton, the CEO of the ITTF, the sport’s world governing body. He described China’s domination of the game as a situation that has “lived with us for quite a while.”

“I kind of feel Hugo is a part of this change, and it’s been very positive — specifically about China,” Dainton added. 

Calderano is No 5 in the sport’s ranking — he reached No 3 a year ago — and he’s beaten many of the top Chinese including No 1 Fan Zhendong.

From Brazil, where table tennis is largely invisible, Hugo Calderano has beaten many of China’s top players, and speaks seven languages including Chinese — he’s a player with the power to broaden the game’s appeal

“If I’m hitting my shots, I have a great chance of winning, even against the best Chinese,” he told The Associated Press. Calderano grew up in Rio de Janeiro, his coach and support team are French, and he lives in Germany. He speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, and German — and “can communicate” in Italian and, of course, Chinese.

Playing this month in Japan he was asked if he’s trying to add an eighth language.

“Not at the moment,” he replied.

“He has a very unusual profile,” Calderano’s coach Jean-Rene Mounie said. “We joke that Hugo is a bit like a guy from Ethiopia or Congo competing in skiing.” 

Chinese players have won 90 percent of the sport’s Olympic gold medals, and it’s the country’s unofficial pastime. Men have won six of the last seven Olympic golds in singles, and the women have won every singles gold since the sport was introduced into the Summer Games in 1988.

China and table tennis have been synonymous since “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” opened relations between the United States and China just over 50 years ago.

However, China didn’t invent it. That was 19th century England, where the parlor game was known as “whiff whaff” and played across dining tables with stiff place mats and wine corks fashioned into balls.

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Dainton wants China to sacrifice some of its medal dominance, focusing instead on international development, sharing expertise, and financial profits.

“They are so technically advanced and most of the world doesn’t have the knowledge,” he said. “Now it’s time for them to share that knowledge.”

Brazil's Hugo Calderano competes against Hibiki Tazoe, during a WTT tournament table tennis match, on Feb 12, 2023, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. (PHOTO / AP)

Steve Dainton, the CEO of the ITTF, the world governing body of table tennis, wants China to sacrifice some of its medal dominance, focusing instead on international development, sharing expertise, and financial profits

An Australian who speaks Mandarin, Dainton said he’s talked about Chinese supremacy in the sport with Liu Guoliang, the president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.

“He (Liu) is very keen on developing international stars because, even for China, it’s important the sport stays relevant and strong outside China,” Dainton said.

Mounie has coached Calderano for a decade and describes his game as playing “stronger, faster, and closer.”

“It’s my nature as a person and, as an athlete, to be very aggressive all the time. I want to impose my game and dominate my opponent,” Calderano said.

Table tennis exists in two worlds. There’s the recreational, mass participation game. And there’s the elite version followed across Asia and hotbeds in Europe; lightning strokes, fidgeting players, and a small table to magnify the speed.

Calderano varies the attack. One serve — a high-toss that goes 3 meters — is followed by a very low one. He crouches almost below the table’s edge to begin the serve and, like many players, continually rubs the table to remove imaginary debris. A sweaty hand gets dried in a corner by the net.

Calderano’s dexterity goes beyond table tennis and languages. He has a personal record of solving the Rubik’s cube in 5.61 seconds, which is just 2 seconds off what’s listed as the world-record by the World Cube Association

“Hugo is the strongest player in the world,” French player Simon Gauzy told the sports newspaper L’Equipe. “He is hyper-aggressive all the time. When it works, it’s unstoppable.”

Calderano’s dexterity goes beyond table tennis and languages. He has a personal record of solving the Rubik’s cube in 5.61 seconds, which is just 2 seconds off what’s listed as the world-record by the World Cube Association.

His father and mother — Marcos Calderano and Elisa Borges, both teachers — got him started at a local club. He left Rio at 14 to train near Sao Paulo, moved at 16 to France and, after a few years back in Brazil to treat an injury, moved to Germany.

“Hugo has the ambition to be on the top of the world, and that means beating the Chinese because they are the best,” Mounie said.

“The emotion he puts into his game is very special, he is always trying to impose his game.”

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Calderano described China’s top four players as a cut above.

“Then they have many other players who are just a level below that are also strong and very dangerous, but just don’t have the consistency of the top guys,” he said. Dainton, the CEO, said he expects the Chinese to, again, sweep gold at next year’s Olympics in Paris, but he can dream. Calderano reached the final 16 at Rio in 2016, and made the quarterfinals at the Tokyo Olympics.

“We need those magical moments where there are some surprises,” he said. “Yes of course, if we had an American, a Canadian — and I’ll say an Australian — that would be a massive, massive story.”

Or a Brazilian.