Table tennis as an American sport has long been confined, under the unassuming name of ping-pong, to tournaments in basements and rec rooms, but if world championship competitor and soon-to-be Olympian Wang Chen has her way, all that will soon change.

At her Wang Chen’s Table Tennis Club on West 100th Street in Manhattan, a narrow hallway opens into a sky-blue room lined with regulation-size tables and wire bins full of hollow white balls. Ms. Wang, tall for her sport at 5 feet, 10 inches, wears white Adidas sneakers and her table tennis uniform, a polo shirt and shorts.

A corkboard on the wall held tacked-up photographs of young children and adults proudly brandishing wooden paddles, a few of the 50 or 80 people every week, depending on the season, who come to train. Ms. Wang pointed out different faces.

“I coach everyone,” she said. “People aged, you know, from 4 to 80.”

For Ms. Wang, table tennis truly is a lifetime achievement. Born in Beijing, she was discovered as a rising talent at the sport in elementary school, at the age of 7. By 11, she was considered a professional and gave up traditional education in favor of training eight hours a day with the members of China’s junior national team.

“In China, table tennis is very popular,” she explained. “You don’t need a big space to play. It’s not like golf, and not like basketball.”

She retired officially from table tennis in 1998 at 24, having competed in two world championships and narrowly missed selection for the 1996 Chinese Olympic team. Looking to find new experiences, she first went to Germany, signing a contract with a German professional team, but she didn’t enjoy it: “So boring.” So in 1999 she came to New York, and found a new home.

During Ms. Wang’s second year in the city, she met Jerry Wartski, who owned a table tennis club across the street from what is now Wang Chen’s. Discovering she could coach, she began to coach Mr. Wartski, who sponsored her and, when the club moved locations, named it after her.

Ms. Wang, who became an American citizen in 2006, relishes her task of introducing New Yorkers to the sport, which, though minimalist in setup, is fast-paced and physically demanding. She has a bigger dream, too: “I wonder if someday I could build two stone tables in Central Park,” she said. “In New York, people have no basements, no place to play.”

But for a table tennis Olympian today, training in New York can be a challenge, because of the dearth of high-level coaches. Ms. Wang, who automatically qualified for the Olympics as an American competitor based on her world ranking, flew to Germany yesterday to train with the European athletes. “New York is good for life,” she said, “but not good for table tennis.”

Chinese domination in the sport will be particularly evident at the Beijing Olympics next month. All four of the American table tennis competitors — one man and three women — were born in China. And unlike past Olympics, spectators will be flocking to watch the matches.

“I remember 2004, at the Athens Olympics,” Ms. Wang said. “No one watched table tennis, no spectators on TV, only players.” On her most recent trip to Beijing, in early July, she found that tickets to matches were already selling out; the sport was so popular with spectators that athletes and coaches were being turned away.

Ms. Wang expressed only excitement at returning to her birthplace to play in front of old friends and family. The Chinese government, she said, has been “very, very serious” about making these games a success, restricting traffic and visitors to Beijing to cut down congestion and welcome visitors.

This August may be Ms. Wang’s first appearance in the Olympics, but she already knows it will also be her last. She plans to retire after the games to spend more time teaching at the club and to continue her education: She will enroll in a special program in Sports Management at Columbia University, where her husband is completing a Ph.D. Beyond that, Ms. Wang is not yet ready to speculate about the more distant horizon.

“I have to graduate first,” she said.

Ms. Wang will spend the remainder of July training in Germany before joining her American teammates for the first time at the Olympic village on August 2.

She will compete against one former teammate at the Olympics, Beijing-born Zhang Yining, who at 25 is ten years Ms. Wang’s junior. All the others have since retired. But if anything, competing against her old home team will give her an edge, she said. “Physically, I feel ready for this,” she said. “They’re very strong, you know, they want to win. So I always try to beat them.”