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Behind the scenes of the Australian Para-table tennis team’s successful Paris 2024 campaign, a beautiful sub-plot unfolded that, to use Maggie Meng’s words, proved that “when female coaches and athletes are given the right support, everything is possible”.
Barely five months before the Games, Meng and her husband welcomed their first child. She had worked with the players until the final week of her pregnancy and had every intention of executing her role as the squad’s assistant coach in Paris, ‘benching’, or coaching courtside during matches.
“I knew I needed to be in Paris,” Meng said. “People asked me if I planned to take the baby with me and I just said, ‘No! No way’.
“I wanted to focus on our team, on our performance. I didn’t want anything to distract me.”
Paralympics Australia offered to make travel arrangements for her family and told Meng there was no rush to decide.
“That was a relief for me,” she said, as she’d heard a range of opinions about her plan to go to the Games alone. “I spoke to some other female coaches and they said it doesn’t matter which way you choose, there will always be people who judge you. They told me, ‘Just listen to your heart when the baby comes. You will know’.
“Then, when the baby was born, everything changed and I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m going to take the baby’.”
Today, Meng looks back on the Paris Paralympics with pride and love. It’s not only because she helped guide the team to two gold medals and three bronze medals, one of Australia’s best Games results. Nor is it because she was named Coach of the Year at the Paralympian of the Year Awards last November. Rather, it’s because she shared these triumphs with her favourite people in the world; her musician husband Simon Mavin and their baby boy, Arthur.
On this International Women’s Day, Meng’s story shows how respect and collaboration can achieve outcomes that benefit everyone. It’s also a chance to show that Australian sport can be a leader in accelerating progress towards gender equality.
For years Paralympics Australia has been at the forefront. In 2020, the International Paralympic Committee named Paralympics Australia the world’s best National Paralympic Committee for promoting women in sport. Currently, women hold the leadership positions of President, Paris Chef de Mission and Athlete Commission Chair. The nine-person Board includes four women, the Executive Leadership Team is majority female and Paralympics Australia’s overall workforce is 55 percent female.
The Australian Paralympic Team for Paris 2024 was 56 percent male. Yet, of Australia’s 18 gold medals, eight were won by women and two were by mixed gender teams. Ten female Australian athletes returned from Paris with a gold medal and three of those women won two gold medals.
Chef de Mission Kate McLoughlin said she was thrilled by the performances of women on the Australian team, who followed the path forged by generations of their predecessors.
“From the trailblazers like Daphne Hilton, the first woman to compete for Australia at the Paralympic Games, on to Libby Kosmala, Louise Sauvage, Danni Di Toro, right through to the stars of Paris 2024 like Lauren Parker – there are so many incredible women who’ve helped create the Australian Paralympic story,” McLoughlin said.
“Not everywhere in our society is as open and encouraging as the Paralympic Movement, but I feel fortunate to do my work at an organisation and in a sporting environment that understands that the best results happen when everybody has the opportunity to contribute and excel.”
Meng was hellbent on excelling at the Paris Games. The fact she believed it necessary to leave her baby at home may owe somewhat to her experiences earlier in life. As a young table tennis star in Beijing representing Hubei province, Meng had been immersed in a rigid and demanding program. Between ages 10 and 15 she didn’t attend school. Instead, she trained eight hours a day, six days a week.
“It was a full-time job,” she said. “That’s how it was in the Chinese professional teams; no school, no study, just training, three to four sessions a day plus physical exercise. I didn’t enjoy it. My whole childhood, basically, was training everyday like a machine.”
Once you were on the professional table tennis pathway in China, she explained, it was highly unusual to give it up. It was expected Meng would go to Europe or Japan to play in leagues where Chinese players could make 10 times the amount they could domestically.
“That’s what most of the players would do. But, when I was 15 my mother said, ‘No, you should stop playing and go back to school to catch up’.
“Because table tennis is the national sport, all the good high schools and universities want the best players. So, I was lucky to go to one of the best high schools in Beijing. From 15 to 23, I was basically half day studying, half day training. In the daytime you study, then training from 3 to 8pm, or something like that.
“It’s interesting because, after I retired from the crazy, intensive training, I started to enjoy playing more. I played more for myself and I liked that.”
It’s a lesson Meng brought to her job as a national coach (Para) with Table Tennis Australia in 2020. After Paris 2024, she was promoted to national head coach (Para), becoming the first woman to hold the position.
“The first thing I try to make sure is that the athletes enjoy training,” she said. “It’s better than pushing them. I encourage them a lot but not force them.
“We try to do athlete-driven training, not coach-driven training. I grew up in that environment, but I don’t want my athletes to go that way. You have to enjoy your sport in your heart.”
Meng’s heart was full after Paris. Husband Simon, who plays keyboard in the band Hiatus Kaiyote, took time off from touring and spent much of the Games pushing a pram around to keep five-and-a-half-month-old Arthur happy.
“They know Paris very well!” she joked.
“I was able to switch up when I needed, at the Village and the stadium. Simon and Arthur would wait for me outside the stadium because I needed to breastfeed Arthur every couple of hours.
“It was a little bit challenging. I was benching, then I would run out and breastfeed and then come back to benching again.
“It was a very special experience. I actually really enjoyed it. I look back and think, ‘Wow, that was a lot’, but I had so much support. That’s the key.”
Upon being named Coach of the Year, Meng felt happy mostly for the team around her, especially her fellow coaches Alois Rosario and George Logothetis.
“They both helped me so much and our team managers, too. I felt like I only needed to be in Paris and go to matches and do the benching. They did so much work behind the scenes, but no one saw it. So, I felt very lucky. For me, it’s motivation and encouragement to keep getting better as a coach.”
By: David Sygall, Paralympics Australia
Published: 7 March 2025
