Table tennis runs deep in Dina Meshref’s family – it’s pretty much a rite of passage.
Both her parents, Dr Alaa Meshref and Shereen El Alfy, were Egyptian national champions and qualified for the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
Her aunts, Nihal Meshref and Shahira El Alfy, also played, with the latter crowned African champion in 2000 – a year in which she also competed at the Sydney Olympics.
Dina’s great aunt, Ines El Darwish, was the first African Championships women’s singles winner, back in 1962.
Grandparents, cousins, siblings, uncles … the Meshrefs and their extended clan have built a table tennis dynasty of champions for over six decades, but no one has been as successful as 30-year-old Dina Meshref, who will be appearing in her fourth Olympic Games this summer in Paris.
Ranked No 25 in the world, Meshref has been a dominant force on the African continent, scooping seven gold medals at the African Games, and winning the Africa Cup an unprecedented nine times.
She was born in Montreal, where her father was doing a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University, but moved to Cairo when she was two months old, and has resided in Egypt ever since.
Given her family history in table tennis, it seemed inevitable for Meshref to pick up a paddle. But that wasn’t necessarily the plan for her as her parents ensured whatever sport she played, it would be her choice.
“My mum started me out in tennis, not table tennis, mainly because my whole family was a table tennis family and she didn’t want to force me into it,” Meshref told The National. “I played tennis for a year and I really liked it.”
She would occasionally join her father at the table tennis hall at Al Ahly Club, where he was involved with the management of the team, and she recalls how much she enjoyed the attention she would get from all the coaches, and how friendly everyone was to her.
The fact that players had the luxury of training indoors with air-conditioning rather than sweating it outside on a tennis court was an added bonus.
She began training in both sports until she had to pick one.
“I was about eight years old and I remember heading back from school and they asked me, which practice are you going to today, and I said table tennis. And I never went to tennis after that,” she said.
Meshref considers herself to be “disciplined and obedient by nature”, which helped her take the sport seriously from a young age. She travelled with her grandfather to tournaments across Egypt, and was motivated by the idea of winning a medal. It took her almost two years before she won her first.
Nearly two decades later, Meshref’s intrinsic drive stems from something deeper than silverware.
“All my focus is to get the best version out of me in table tennis, mentally, physically and everything. I always feel like I have more within me,” she says.
“I am always searching for the best possible training opportunities, to the extent that I would value more a good training opportunity than any big competition. Because I feel like I have something within me that I haven’t been unable to unlock, or unleash. I want to push myself to the limit. And I believe like if I did that, then I can achieve lots of good results.”
Back in 2008, Meshref, who was a young teen at the time, was in a training camp in China alongside two of her older compatriots who were training for the Beijing Olympics.
“I felt how huge it was and wanted to really make it myself one day,” she remembers.
“When I qualified for my first Olympics at London 2012, it was the best experience of my life. That feeling of that first Olympics is unlike anything else.
“Now, I’m going to my fourth Olympics, an event I dreamt of going to one day. I’m very grateful.”
With a wealth of experience under her belt, Meshref heads to Paris this summer keen to avoid past mistakes.
“Perhaps I went there thinking way too much about the results,” she reflects on her previous appearances at the Games.
“Especially with the Tokyo Olympics, they were postponed for a full year, so I worked more and more during that additional year and I felt like because I did all that extra training, because I really worked hard during the pandemic, I went there more focused on results.
“I also had a manageable draw, so I felt like it was a big opportunity. I didn’t enjoy it too much to be honest. I was affected by several things in my environment, and it’s normal that you won’t find the perfect environment while competing, and it’s all about how you’re going to control yourself and how you’d react towards these things. So hopefully this time I can avoid these mistakes.”
Meshref lost in the third round in Tokyo after leading her Dutch opponent Britt Eerland 3-0 in games. On the men’s side, Egypt’s Omar Assar enjoyed a heroic run to the quarter-finals, where he pushed Chinese superstar and five-time Olympic gold medallist Ma Long to five games before surrendering.
Assar’s exploits have struck a chord with Meshref.
“I don’t see an Olympic medal as something that is too far from my reach,” she said.
“I feel it’s more attainable than how I felt it was during the Tokyo Olympics. Especially seeing Omar make the quarter-finals and being this close; I feel like step by step, we’re starting to believe more that we can. My goal as Dina is to reach my full potential in table tennis and the results will take care of themselves.”
Meshref has provided ample inspiration for Egyptian athletes. In 2018, she clinched gold in women’s singles at the Mediterranean Games, which remains one of her proudest moments.
“As far as I know, it was the first time in history for an Egyptian or African woman to win that. I went there thinking it was such a long shot, I went there just dreaming of a medal and when I ended up getting gold, it was huge,” she says.
“And until now, I consider it one of the most important events of my career. And the final was against a Chinese-born player that was naturalised to represent Monaco [Yang Xiaoxin]. So it was special.”
Chinese players are by the far the most dominant in the sport and Meshref knows she won’t have a shot at winning any big title without finding a way to beat them.
“Since I was young, maybe 10 years old, I have been going to China to train regularly. My parents were very keen on having me train there so automatically I got used to their style of play. But of course their national team players are a different story,” she explains.
“There was this barrier that the Chinese national team players are untouchable and you don’t get to train with them or face them.”
The rebranding of the World Table Tennis tour in 2020 invigorated the sport at the professional level and gave players more exposure to China’s top-tier talent.
“We started seeing them lose a few matches. Of course they win more often than they lose, but that barrier between us and them started to break down,” said Meshref.
“And for me personally, I played a match against a former world champion [Wang Manyu in Xinxiang in 2023]; it was surprisingly very close. I lost 3-2, so that was another step for me to take down that barrier.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen in one step. During the match I didn’t really believe I could win, even though the match came down to just three points. But then the next time I was in the same situation, I started to feel that I was better in that area.”
Meshref’s performance against Wang did not go unnoticed.
Rising Egyptian star Hana Goda found it particularly encouraging, and says it has instilled additional belief within her to step up and challenge the Chinese.
“That was one of the first times, maybe an African, or non-Asian, to do this against a Chinese player. That was eye-opening. I was like, ‘wow, Dina is my teammate, we play against each other, look what she’s done!’” Goda said in an episode of the Abtal podcast.
Goda exploded onto the scene when she rose to the top of the world cadet rankings (under-15) when she was just 12 years old. She was crowned African champion at 15, and is currently No 30 in the world (at the senior level) at the age of 16.
She grew up idolising Meshref and considers the first time she beat her to be one of the “craziest” moments of her career.
“Last year [2022] we were roommates at every tournament we competed in together; I learnt a lot from her, a lot of different things. I learnt to be a better person overall. She’s a very, very good person,” said Goda of Meshref.
Goda’s rise has also been helpful for Meshref, who feels the teen prodigy has sparked some extra fire in her.
“Hana is standing out right now and will inspire a whole generation behind her,” says Meshref.
“This is very important, it means a lot to me. It’s very healthy for us, because if you’re alone, you won’t feel motivated enough.
“For many years, I was winning the African competitions in a fairly routine manner, and perhaps lacked that push to work harder since I was winning quite comfortably. But when you have someone come up from your own country, it provides a healthy competition.
“In a sport like ours, where we rely on rankings and compete one-on-one, this kind of stuff is important. So the last few years, my motivation has been really high. I can train up to six hours without feeling tired.”
Meshref’s motivation remains high but she also admits she has started thinking about retirement since turning 30 earlier this year.
“I started feeling, 'Do I want to spend my entire youth doing just one thing?' I’m worried that I missed out on other things. If you had asked me this question even a year ago, I would have told you I’m not thinking of retirement at all. But the thing is, I don’t want to be forced into retirement. I don’t want to stop because I have to stop. I want it to be my choice,” she explained.
“I want to give myself a chance to do other things in life. Who knows, maybe I’ll think differently after the Olympics. But the intensity of the WTT is very stressful and exhausting. So I don’t know how much longer I can sustain this.”
Meshref is part of an exceptional generation of Egyptian women athletes who have excelled on the global stage for an extended period of time. Sprint swimmer Farida Osman is also heading to her fourth Olympics this summer and is a three-time World Championship medallist.
Hedaya Malak snagged Olympic bronze medals in taekwondo at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, while karateka Feryal Abdelaziz became Egypt’s first female Olympic gold medallist when she topped the podium in kumite +61kg action in Tokyo. Not to mention the sweeping success of the likes of Nour El Sherbini and Nouran Gohar in squash.
“It means a lot to see all these Egyptian women doing so well,” said Meshref.
“I believe that as women, we’re capable of accomplishing a lot. We’re hard-workers, disciplined, and it shows how strong women are in our country.”
