BEIJING - China's former Olympic and world champion Kong Linghui was appointed assistant coach for the women's national table tennis team on Sunday, three days after he announced his retirement from the sport.

Kong Linghui of China returns a shot in the men's singles round three match against Zoltan Fejer-Konnerth of Germany at the 48th World Table Tennis Championships in Shanghai in this May 3, 2005 file photo. China's sport officials are wondering how to punish Olympic table tennis gold medallist Kong who was held by police for drink-driving after crashing his Porsche into a taxi, Chinese media reported on July 24, 2006. [Reuters]

"I had thought of the possibility of being named to coach the women's national team," Kong said after learning his appointment.

"No one had told me that before Liu Fengyan, the director of the Table Tennis & Badminton Administrative Center, announced it this morning.

"It's not a surprise for me. After all, the chances of coaching the men's team and the women's are equal," he added.

Liu believed that Kong's role in the women's team offers an opportunity for the "rookie" to get more adapted to the coaching job.

"Kong had done a good job in assisting Liu Guoliang, the head coach of Chinese men's national team, before he formally retired as a table tennis player last Thursday," said Liu.

"He has accumulated kinds of experience from it and is more experienced than his former teammate Yan Sen, who was named assistant coach of the women's reserve team. That's why we gave Kong a job on the national team, while Yan a post in the reserve team.

"But Kong has few understandings about the girl paddlers and no experience in coaching girls and communicating with them in training, so we want him to get familiar with the new post first before assigning some real tasks to him," he added.

Liu's concerns got echoed by Kong himself. He said: "Coaching women paddlers is complete new job for me since the girls think different, play different and say in different styles with men paddlers. I have to work hard into my new post."

The "Prince of Table Tennis", who will turn 31 on Wednesday, had played his last competitive match in the Chinese national championships in Wuxi, where the native of Heilongjiang province lost his first match of the event representing his home town and decided to retire after find no enough energy to carry on hisbrilliant career.

"Frankly speaking, I can't live without playing table tennis. It is an anguishing decision to quit. I had planned to play until after the 2008 Olympics, but it now seems unrealistic," said Kong when announcing his retirement.

He said he would take up a coaching role in the Chinese national team.

"As a player, I am not in my prime any longer, so I hope to continue to make contributions to my motherland by taking up a coaching role," Kong said.

Hints have speaked out of itself, however, as the former star paddler deeply ruined his public image in the mid of last summer when Kong slammed his Porche to a cab and been charged with drunken driving.

Kong was arrested but narrowly escaped a detainment after his navy-blue Porche Boxster-s clashed with a taxi on July 21 with no casualty was caused in the accident, and he later made a public apology while paying 1800 yuan RMB penalty with his driving licence suspended for six months.

"As a member of the Chinese table tennis national team, I've gotten widely concerned of and supported by many, and should have taken the responsiblity of setting a good example for youngsters after receiving so many honors in my career.

"I feel really sorry to this errancy. I sincerely apologise to everybody," he said in a statement to say sorry for the traffic accident.

The table tennis great began his athletic career at age six. He made the Heilongjiang provincial team in 1986 before he went on to make the national team 1991.

Playing in the handshake style, Kong jumped out of oblivion by nabbing two gold and one silver medals in the 1995 world championships held in north Chinese city Tianjin.

At the beginning of the year, Kong was recrutited into the national coaching team.