FROM LUNCHTIME they were gathering outside Peking University hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero. Forget Michael Phelps. Forget Kobe Bryant. Forget even Liu Xiang. For a sizable proportion of Beijing, this was the hottest ticket in town.

We should have guessed it from the extra security at the media gate. They searched my bag, asked that I take a sip from my bottle of water. They looked very closely at my accreditation then stared me in the eye. "Thank you for co-operation. Enjoy your work."

From the first step inside the 6,000-seater arena, the chants of "Wang Ha-o, Wang Ha-o" were unmistakable. I was a little late, and their hero was already on court.

Wang Hao is the best table-tennis player in the world. He's a chubby-faced 24-year-old from the Changchun district in northeast China with a tint of brown dye running through his hair and goes by the nickname "Hurricane Hao".

Wang could be voted the sexiest man alive in all of China and still couldn't be any more popular than he is right now. Nor could he feel under more pressure.

Of all the gold medals the host country expects at these Games - including that of Liu in the sprint hurdles - none come loaded with as much sense of inevitability as those in table tennis.

There are those who believe table tennis has no place in the Olympics, but try telling that to the 1.3 billion Chinese. For them it is far more than a game; it's their national pastime, or at least used to be, before PlayStation started to take over.

They still boast the top four men and top five women players in the world. They're expected to win gold, silver and bronze in both singles, and of course walk away with the team competition, newly introduced for Beijing.

For the team competition, eight tables are laid out symmetrically, but as far as the crowd are concerned, there's only one game that matters: China versus Greece.

Wang plays a singles match and so does Ma "King of Spin" Lin (the world number two), before Wang joins his namesake Wang "The Power" Liqin (the world number four) in a doubles match.

What has helped turn Wang into the world number one is his pioneering "penhold grip reverse backhand move". Eschewing the orthodox grip, he holds the bat as he would a pen, and when he employs his backhand move he can seriously upset opponents.

His Greek opponent, Kalinikos Kreanga, looked fairly upset when Wang took the first two games 11-9, 11-9. Unexpectedly, the Greek won the third game 11-8. But Wang laughed off the reverse and won the deciding game 11-8.

For the doubles match, "Hurricane Hao" teamed up with "The Power" Liqin, and this time they looked to be having a little too much fun. Wooo! Aaah! Oooh!

Suddenly they trailed the Greek pair 9-1. So they wiped the smiles off their faces, stopped messing about, and won the next 10 points in succession to win 11-9.

"This is the first match, you see, it's different from practice," Wang later explained. "We haven't played many matches against two choppers. We were slow to take the initiative at the beginning. Then we made an effort to adjust and pull up and we made it."

Presumably there's nothing insulting about being called a "chopper". Table tennis is a family sport, and losing is nothing to get too upset about.

So after the bravura finish that brought the entire crowd to their feet, the Chinese diplomatically embraced the Greeks.

But then again, for Wang and his team-mates, losing was never an option.