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Of Killerspin has recently been the focus of the camera eye and writer pen due not just to her excellent (or should I say, "sexcellent") level of table tennis play, but to her attractive face and physique, which while not unusual in other venues of the sports world, is highly unusual in the forgotten sports corner of competitive table tennis, where fat guys, old timers, and all-around dorks tend to roam. It's because of her sexy looks, coupled with her excellent play, that table tennis has created a slight rumble in the mainstream media.
Table Tennis Dayton can attest to her popularity by way of it's hosted web logs and stats. A day doesn't go by where "biba pics", "anna kournikova of table tennis" and other such search terms are employed in the table tennis nerd's desperate search for his new Aphrodite.
Well horny table tennis boyz - here you have found the motherlode of Biba pictures. This one's for you guys. New pictures will be added when available. If you have, or know of a good Biba pics email them to me
Can Sex Sell Table Tennis?
Killerspin, Biba Are Banking On It
Biba, the new face of table tennis, was at Mohegan Sun on Thursday to promote the May 29th championships.
(TIA ANN CHAPMAN)
MONTVILLE -- The woman being leaned on by a misunderstood sport leans in and smiles. Looking across the table, over the net, she has her brown hair in a ponytail, the looks of a model, groups of male casino-goers in awe - and a 65-mph forehand slam.
Ahh ... Biba. huba huba
Meet Biba, 27. She's striking, engaging, graceful, good-humored and perhaps even a little mischievous.
That's what a growing group ofgawking followers are saying and thinking. Sex appeal has made its way to the pingpong table. Her full name is Biljana Golic, but she goes only by Biba (Bee-buh). Tennis has Anna. Table tennis has Biba.
In fact, her sponsor, Killerspin, has dubbed her "The Anna Kournikova of Table Tennis," a comparison Biba is proud of. Giggling, she says she hopes her looks can help drum up interest for a sport she grew up dominating in the former Yugoslavia, a sport perceived much differently in the United States.
"I actually have a lot of fun promoting it," Biba said.
Here, "pingpong," a term patented by Parker Brothers in 1901, is played in dank basements. Over the years, the tables wear, the nets sag, the dust builds and stains remain. But table tennis is an Olympic sport long dominated by China, and taken more seriously by many Asian and European countries.
Biba and Killerspin, a table tennis manufacturer, are trying to further popularize the sport in the U.S. That's why Biba was at Mohegan Sun Thursday, hitting forehands and backhands through the smoky casino air to promote the Mohegan Sun Killerspin Extreme Championship on May 29.
There was a table set up adjacent to the Mohegan Sun Arena entrance, right past the Casino of the Earth. That was odd enough, with balls occasionally rolling past the posh stores that lead to Casino of the Sky. Most of the tournament's $100,000 purse will go to participants in the four-team men's competition. But Biba, who will play one of three singles matches, will be the highlight.
She ordinarily is. And she was Thursday, wearing Killerspin's tight, red skirt.
With Biba exchanging volleys with Killerspin founder Robert Blackwell Jr., three 20-something males became interested. Eventually they walked away, one shouting, "I'll show you how to play, honey."
"This," Biba said, rolling her eyes and smiling, "happens all the time."
You can't beat her. Trust one Courant reporter who plays often. If her serve isn't too quick for reflexes, it's tantalizingly slow, seemingly bouncing 90-degrees to the side as it touches the table, impossible for Average Joe to return. And as the ball continually sails long or into the net, she smiles as if to say, "Nice try, buddy." The reporter was trailing 7-0 - and Biba was probably putting 20 percent effort into the match - when she said, "Now I'll play lefty, just to rub it in."
Moments later, the reporter got his only point in an 11-1 loss, because Biba hit into the net.
"Really, it's the fastest sport in the world," Blackwell said. "Once people see it played at a very high level, they're really amazed. And it's a great sport to participate in, whether your aspirations are to be an Olympian or you're just an old guy who wants to have fun. You have to really understand spin, and most people don't. If you understand the basics of spin, then you can really progress. It's like physical chess."
The daughter of a table tennis coach, Biba was knocking balls against walls and across tables just about as soon as she could walk. She played at a prestigious club in Coka, her home city, and became a two-time Yugoslavian champion in singles and mixed doubles. She said her career was disrupted with her country in civil war, but she eventually relocated to Germany, then the U.S. At Texas Wesleyan University in 2004, she was the collegiate national champion.
That's when Blackwell, 44, stepped in.
"The clothes were so ugly it made me sick," he said of Biba's Texas Wesleyan uniform, featuring blue shorts. "I said, 'I'm going to bring her to Chicago.'"
And give her a skirt?
"She's dressed like a woman," said Blackwell, whose company sponsors 12 players. "She's a very good player. She has very good character, personality. That's what attracted us to her, made us want to sponsor her. But it doesn't hurt that she's not ugly."
Biba is allowed to participate in events for money because table tennis is not an NCAA-sanctioned sport, Blackwell said. So she signed and moved to Chicago, where Killerspin is located. She doesn't make much money in tournaments, a few thousand here and there. She is on a table tennis scholarship at Illinois Institute of Technology, this year finishing second to Jackie Lee of California-Berkeley in the national championships.
She's majoring in business but considering a change. "I'm more of a creative person," she said.
It's no coincidence that Biba was the only player made available Thursday. Blackwell wants her as the face of his company, as the face of the sport. And it's Biba who many fans want to see. A few hundred, out of about 2,000, showed up just to see Biba at a recent event in Chicago. Fans have held up signs proposing marriage. Biba, who is single, said she has fun with it all.
"She's kind of mild-mannered," Blackwell said. "But it's got to be interesting hearing people scream your name and seeing them carry signs asking you to marry them."
Blackwell said Killerspin is working toward further exposure for Biba, perhaps photo shoots for magazines.
Playboy?
"I don't know," he said, motioning to Biba. "Would you pose for Playboy?"
"I didn't think about that," she said.
The New Face of Ping Pong
What Happens When The Less-Than-Cool World Of Professional Table Tennis Gets To Show Off A Marketable Athlete?
By Joseph Guinto, Southwest Airlines Spirit
Biba
Let's take nothing away from Biba Golic. But the fact that this 27-year old Serbian who lives in Chicago has been dubbed "the Anna Kournikova of table tennis" is just, well, weird.
Don't misunderstand. Biba - her real name is Biljana, but no one ever calls her anything except Biba - does have a distinct Kournikovappeal. She has a charming Eastern European accent; lovely, golden hair and an undeniably fit figure. And in table tennis, a sport that, according to the style setters at GQ, "doesn't require good looks or youth or even a sense of fashion," Biba is a true standout. While most other female players insist on competing in those hideous, shapeless plastic shorts and matching tops, Biba has taken to clingy spandex minidresses. Male fans recognize the difference. They grin goofily when Biba takes the table. One fan even authored a "Marry me, Biba" sign at a recent match.
"I don't know what to think of it," says Biba, who is in the United States to pursue the college degree that eluded her in her war-torn homeland. "But I'm flattered."
Still, here's the thing. Biba Golic is no Anna Kournikova. For one thing, Anna succeeded off court even as she failed on it. But Biba has had substantial success on court. She's the number-two ranked female collegiate player in the country, is in the top 10 overall among women playing in the United States, and ranks 209th among women worldwide - that's good for a U.S.-based player. For another thing, if you call Biba the Anna Kournikova of table tennis, then, by extension, you suggest that table tennis itself, if played by attractive athletes, can be, you know, sexy.
Ping-Pong? Sexy? You cannot be serious.
But a company called - no kidding - Killerspin is absolutely serious. The Chicago-based marketer of table tennis equipment - let's call them "the Nike of table tennis" - is Biba's main sponsor. And it's banking that Biba can both help pump up product sales and bring pro table tennis to a broader audience in the United States.
To that end, the company backed Biba's move this year to Chicago from Texas, where she had been attending Texas Wesleyan University (she's now studying at Illinois Institute of Technology on a scholarship). "Biba got a scholarship at Texas Wesleyan," says Killerspin president Robert Blackwell Jr. "But they made her wear ugly clothes. So I brought her to Chicago."
He's joking. A little. The clothes were ugly. But, now, with her new, slinkier Killerspin digs, the sultrier Serb's image has started popping up everywhere Killerspin stamps its brand. There's Biba sitting on a Killerspin RAD playing table. (It's rad! Get it?) Whoa, there's Biba's belly button peeking out on a poster for a Killerspin Extreme tournament. (Table tennis ... to the extreme! Now that's really rad.)
In most other sports, of course, it would hardly be revolutionary to sell a female athlete by putting her in short skirts and shirts that flash a hint of navel. Pro beach volleyball doesn't even give its players that much clothing. But for table tennis, selling sultriness is new ground. And the sport's most die-hard supporters aren't sure what to make of it.
Biba sitting pretty
"Some have said Biba is our most marketable player," says Larry Hodges, editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine. "Others disagree. It's a tough call. There's no answer unless we actually get results." Results. You want results? One Internet blogger counted the results last year after a Killerspin tournament featuring Biba aired on ESPN2. He found that hundreds of ambitious Googlers had gone online hoping to find the same types of images associated with "Biba Golic" that one might find associated with "Paris Hilton." They must have been disappointed. Not only has Biba not posed in Maxim, she doesn't seem to know what it is when I mention it.
What she does know is that she's been complimented on her looks throughout her career, including the 15 years she played in Europe. "But it is different now, here," she says, giggling with a shyness that belies her game, an aggressive, attacking style usually employed by men. "I have never had anything happen to me like what is happening in the United States."
No one else has, either. To be sure, it's not all Biba. But the Killerspin events Biba has participated in have been the best-attended table tennis tournaments ever in the United States. Though the game has been a solid spectator draw for decades in Europe and Asia, where the players are vastly better, it's never really gotten out of the rec room in this country. No American has ever medaled in table tennis at the Olympics, and Forrest Gump is the only American to claim a noteworthy world title. And he wasn't real. Thing is, few Americans, including many of those who Ping-Pong regularly, appreciate the professional game's complexity and athleticism.
"The sport hasn't been marketed very well here," says Killerspin's Blackwell. "You'd be surprised at how many people come out of their basement and think they can go to the Olympics in table tennis. And most of those people would have almost no chance to even return Biba's serve."
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TOPSPIN
He's right. Biba is better than you. She's had a lot more practice at it. Biba started playing at age 10, when her father, a table tennis coach, first taught her the game. By her teens, she was already one of Yugoslavia's state-sponsored players. You read that right: state-sponsored. See, in Europe, table tennis is different. Hundreds, thousands, pack arenas to watch the best players and teams compete in what are lightning-fast battles of reflexes. Stars are born. The mug of Austrian Werner Schlager, one of the most popular players, even adorns an Austrian postage stamp. He joins Pope John Paul II as one of the few living people to share that distinction. Ping-Pong, or table tennis - many pros hate the trademark term for the game, considering it a slur - is just that popular there.
Biba and her teammates certainly profited from that popularity. Yugoslavian taxpayers underwrote everything from their housing to travel expenses. They paid back the country with wins.
But just as Biba was turning 17 and her game was reaching its zenith, the wars that split Yugoslavia put her career on hold. "My country wasn't recognized internationally," Biba says. "So we couldn't compete. That meant I kind of skipped two years in my career, which were very important. I think my career would have gone in a different direction had I not skipped those two years."
She struggles for the words to put that loss in proper perspective, given the suffering of others during those wars. The words don't come easily in English. Finally she says. "Well, it was a disappointment for me, but ..."
Biba at the table
When the fighting settled down, and Europe again accepted athletes from the former Yugoslavia, Biba enrolled in college. She found the travel demands in Europe, though, were a bad match for studies. So she came to the United States and landed first at Texas Wesleyan University, which has one of the best table tennis programs in the country and is one of just a handful of colleges offering athletic scholarships to table tennis players. "Biba is a very talented player, one of the best," says Christian Lilleroos, Biba's coach at Wesleyan. He adds, virtually in the same breath, "But she needs to get stronger. She needs to lift more weights."
Biba might disagree. "I practice every day," Biba counters. "I lift weights. Not too many weights. I have to really train to be mentally ready because this is a sport you must play with a lot of feeling."
PLAY IT AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH FEELING
Yeah, feeling. Feeling is actually a problem. Maybe the biggest problem that Brand Biba faces, and definitely one of the biggest problems table tennis has, is trying to expand its U.S. audience.
Consider this: To hit that little celluloid ball with optimum power, players have to crouch low, keeping their waists aligned with the height of the table, about 30 inches. That's probably the height of your office desk. The ball, meanwhile, bounces by so fast that there's virtually no time to think, making table tennis almost entirely a game of instinct.
The picture that emerges is this: Two (or four) players facing off across a small table, both crouched down, knees bent, both concentrating intensely so as to speed their reflexes. Clenched muscles, intense concentration. From a spectator's vantage, it doesn't look like the players are having fun. And, worse, even if it looks athletic - what with the muscles and the crouching and the quick hands and all - it's hardly sexy. Unfortunately, that's true even when you're playing in a short skirt.
Then again, maybe the skirt really isn't the point anyway. "Table tennis is hard work, hard to play," Biba says. "But it is very good to win."
And there's nothing weird about that.
Record...............
Biljana 'Biba' Golic
Biba is originally from Yugoslavia where she still plays for the national team. Finished in 4th place in the 2003 European Championships in team.
Has won several national championships. Featured player on ESPN 2 from the Killerspin Extreme Table Tennis Championships
- 2003 Pacific Rim Open in Portland OR, Women’s singles champion
- 2004 CA Open in San Francisco Women’s singles champion
- 2004 Buckeye Open in Ohio, Women’s singles champion
- 2004 National Collegiate champion in Women’s singles, doubles, Mixed dbls, & team
- Recipient of the 2004 TX Wesleyan Most Valuable Table Tennis Player Award
- Overall ranked number 1 Female in TX, number 8 in USA, and number 1 for colleges
Need More Biba: (CLICK HERE) for another story on our table tennis star...........
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