Ai Fukuhara will have the support of a nation when Japan takes on Singapore for the women's table tennis team bronze medal at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday — plus a Chinese public that has taken the 27-year-old to its heart.
Japan faces Singapore having missed out on the chance to square off for the gold medal against No. 1-ranked China, where Fukuhara enjoys superstar status and a massive following on local social media.
Fukuhara, who is fluent in Mandarin and has 340,000 followers on her Weibo micro-blogging account, trained with the Chinese national team as a teenager and still has a Chinese coach.