'If you are taller, then you look down on the ball - you see it from a different angle. Being short, I could see the ball higher - and that gave me more opportunity to attack. I was a very attacking player and so being smaller was to my advantage. My style was based on speed and attacking all the time. In table tennis, attack is important, more important than defence. The other four coaches listened to what he said and I was given a chance.'

Deng - all 1.5 metres of her - didn't take long to prove her doubters wrong. In April 1989, just a few months after joining the national team, she won the women's doubles with partner Qiao Hong at the World Championships in Dortmund. It was to be the first world title in a stellar career that ended with her being acclaimed as the greatest female player in the history of the game.

Deng was born in 1973 in Zhengzhou, Henan province. Her father had been an outstanding table tennis player and he became her first coach. She first picked up a bat at the age of five - by 13, she was beating China's best players. 'Even from an early age I dreamed of being world champion,' she says. That dream was realised in 1991 when she captured the world singles title. She followed that with more success at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, partnering Qiao to the doubles gold and then capturing the singles crown - beating her friend Qiao in the final. The pair repeated their doubles success four years later in Atlanta with Deng capturing her fourth Olympic gold by defeating Taiwan's Chen Jing in the singles. Deng says it was tougher second time around.

'The 1996 Olympics were harder. By then I had been world number one for several years. When you are in that position the other players are always out to beat you. They will study your game, your tactics, to try to find a weakness. It was really hard for me to stay at that high level - table tennis is not only about skill and tactics, you have to be very strong mentally.

'Normally, when I was with the national team, we would practise about five and a half or six hours a day. Then I would go away and do about an hour's extra practice on my own. And on top of that I would spend time studying opponents' styles and tactics, which was extremely important. Table tennis is a tactical sport and you alter your tactics depending on who you're playing. You also change tactics often during a game - and so does your opponent. You have to think quickly.'

By the end of 1997 - a year in which she again captured singles and doubles gold at the World Championships - Deng felt she had done enough. 'I was 24, which is very young for a table tennis player to retire. Some of them go on well into their 30s. But by that time I'd won 18 world-level titles and had suffered several injuries. All professional athletes have to retire sometime and I felt that was the time for me. I wanted to do something else, to improve myself in a different field.'

And that meant education. She enrolled at the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing and from there was offered a scholarship to study at the Centre for English Language Education at Nottingham University in the English Midlands. Two years later, she is still in Nottingham, completing a masters degree - hopefully by September - and ready to put her new-found knowledge to good use both in China and overseas.

Her area of research is women in sport. 'I'm interested in this topic for two reasons. Firstly, I am a member of the International Olympic Committee's athletes commission and one of our targets is to get more women to participate in sports, more women to participate in the Olympic Games and more women to be involved in high positions in international sporting federations. I am also involved with the International Table Tennis Federation's women's development programme and we have held training camps in Tunisia [for African players] and Cuba [for South American players] designed to develop the women's game.

'Secondly, China is unusual in world sport in that its women athletes out-perform its men in the international arena. China has won a total of 80 gold medals in the history of the Olympic Games and more than half of these have been won by female athletes. I want to use China's female athletes as an example for my research. Hopefully we can show other countries the way forward for female athletes.'

As someone who has benefited from the mainland's state-sponsored sports programme, Deng feels a need to give something back. 'I want to go back home to work with the athletes there. In China, the Government provides all the conditions and funding and the result is that Chinese athletes have been very successful. Without that funding, such achievements would be impossible. So, as a Chinese athlete, I feel I have a responsibility to go back to work with them.

'Also, we don't have that many world-famous Chinese athletes and we have to work to try to change that. It is quite important for people to know about China and to know about Chinese athletes.'

As arguably China's most famous athlete, Deng was a natural choice to join the Laureus World Sports Academy, a 'dream team' of sporting legends dedicated to using sport as a tool for social change. The Academy, chaired by American athletics great Ed Moses, promotes and endorses 12 different Laureus 'Sport for Good' community projects throughout the world and also chooses the winners of the annual Laureus World Sports Awards - the 'sporting Oscars' - which will be held on Tuesday in Monaco.

In Monaco, Deng will be inducted as the Academy's 44th and newest member. She says she is thrilled. 'I already know Academy members like [Soviet pole vaulter] Sergei Bubka and [Kenyan middle distance runner] Kip Keino through my work with the IOC athletes commission. I was very pleased to accept the invitation to join. I have been involved in the Hope project in China since about 1991. Hope aims to provide a better education for children in the poorest rural areas of China. Now I'm also going to be working on community projects at an international level. I'm delighted to be involved.'

The nominees - see Monday Sport