How it unfolded
The men's singles final at the 25th World Championships, held in Dortmund, West Germany in April 1959, pitted 21-year-old Chinese player Rong Guotuan against Hungary's Ferenc Sido, the 1953 world champion. Rong had been born and raised in Hong Kong and had moved to Guangzhou in 1957, joining the Chinese national team only two years earlier. He unsettled Europe's steady, stable game with short, heavily spun serves followed by a fast forehand, winning 3-1 to give China its first world champion in any sport. He returned home a national hero, and table tennis immediately became a matter of state. Two years later, at the 1961 World Championships in Beijing, China won its first Swaythling Cup and Zhuang Zedong began a run of three straight world singles titles, while Rong retired to coach the women's national team. When the Cultural Revolution began, however, he became a target of political persecution and took his own life in 1968 at the age of 30.
Why it still matters
Everything about Chinese table tennis began with this one match. Before 1959, China had no international track record at all, but after this title a selection pyramid running from school and provincial sports schools up to the national team was built at state level. The result that 37 of the 42 Olympic golds contested from the sport's 1988 Olympic debut through 2024 went to China is the answer to more than 60 years of investment that started with this Dortmund final.