By TANYA ENBERG -- SLAM! Sports
Canada's Olympic table tennis team are hoping that the sport of speed will begin turning heads at this year's Olympic games being held in Sydney Australia.

 Nine years ago, when Weng Xiao Wang took to the table tennis court with the encouragement of her father who had coached the sport in Hong Kong, she never dreamt she would become part of the Canadian Olympic team -- and she didn't necessarily always want to be.

 Wang says she didn't begin to embrace the sport until she was about 12 years old.

 "You have to train like crazy," she says, adding that it takes its toll on her social life. Now at age 19, she says she couldn't imagine placing her focus on any other sport. No other sport can compare to it, she says.

 Although table tennis fails to gain the recognition it deserves, she believes more people are beginning to tune in to it on an international level.

 "It's not a dangerous sport compared to other sports," she says, adding that it sure does have speed, though.

 Despite enduring a tad of sleep deprivation caused by the excitement over having learned she had made the Olympic team, Wang is ready to train harder than ever. And that means that the Canadian table tennis team will have anything a typical teenage summer.

 While most teens are resting after finishing another high school year, the tennis teammates will spend most of theirs away from home - training, competing and training even more. But 17-year-old Olympic team member Marie-Christine Roussy says balancing school, hobbies and training is just par for the course.

 Roussy, who maintains a 94 per cent average at school, will find herself on a different path with her team for most of the summer -- one that's on the road.

 The current 20 hours a week she sets aside for table tennis, will drastically increase when she battles against Canada's strongest players twice a day in Ottawa. Roussy will also gain a pre-Olympic taste of global competition when she wages her talent against some of the world's toughest players in Hungary. Then she'll greet the summer's end with the greatest global event she can imagine - the Olympic Games.

 But Roussy's been fine-tuning her skills for literally more than half her life. Ten years ago when her brother Jean-Francois introduced her to table tennis, she entered a competition and placed fourth. "I thought maybe that wasn't too bad," she says. Now, she says she's "facing the most important tournament" in her life.

 According to Roussy, the intense training along with the 10 years she has dedicated to the sport will help prepare her to work alongside world champion Lijuan Geng of Ottawa in the doubles tournament at the Olympics games.

 A great table tennis player needs overall physical fitness combined with speed, skilled footwork and arm movements, Roussy says, adding that she still has a lot she wants to learn about the sport.