Deng Yaping is not a household name in England, but in her home country of China she was voted Female Athlete of the Century.

Her prize was a statue of a golden dragon weighing one kilogramme and valued at more than £10,000.

Deng Yaping

Deng's accomplishments make a long and impressive list: four-time Olympic champion in table tennis, twice in singles at Barcelona and Atlanta, and twice in doubles with her Chinese partner Hong Qiao, also in 1992 and 1996.

She has a total of 18 world and Olympics championships to her credit in a career that only ended after the Atlanta games. She was ranked the number one player in women's table tennis in the world from 1993-98.

Recently she attended the Sydney Olympics as a member of the International Olympic Committee's athletes commission, where she ran in the first election to choose an IOC athletes commission.

Although she was not successful in her bid to be elected to the IOC's athlete's commission for another term, she was recently re-appointed to a seat by the President of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

So what brought her to the University of Nottingham? She was offered a scholarship to study at the Centre for English Language Education while at the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing.

Her English has improved leaps and bounds as she moves around the university, helps with coaching of the English national table tennis team, and travels to events and conferences around the world.

She plans to return to Qinghua University in the spring to finish her English degree there. She says she has enjoyed her time in the city enormously and hopes to return to the University of Nottingham for further study.

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