At 58, Cynthia Ranii was paralyzed from the chest down. 20 years later, her sights are set on a Paralympic medal

"That's a hard kind of thing to take,"

"It's just the reality. He beat me mainly because he took advantage of my being in a chair, which is exactly what he should have done, if he wanted to win,"

"He did exactly the right thing."

Ranii, 78, traveled from Santa Cruz to Santa Clara to play a five-set table tennis match from a wheelchair. She won the first two sets but lost the next three after a younger opponent, about 12, adjusted his play with parental coaching. The opponent increased spin and used high, deep lobs that exploited limitations of playing from a seated position. Ranii, paralyzed from the chest down by a neuro-immunologic disorder two decades earlier, recognized the tactical disadvantage and accepted the result without bitterness, calling the opponent's strategy "exactly the right thing."

Read at The Mercury News