The 27-year-ol dwas part of the team that won the silver medal at the Olympics in Beijing last year, Singapore's first for 48 years, and has now promised that she will not allow her wishes to start a family getting in the way of competing in London.

 

She has agreed with Lee Bee Wah, the president of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA) that if she is not pregnant by the end of 2010 she will postpone her plans until after the Olympics.

 

That is because if Jiawei is to qualify for London she will need to have gathered enough ranking points on the sport's Pro Tour circuit to guarantee herself a place.

 

Jawei was born in Beijing but moved to Singapore when she was 14 and made her debut for adopted country when she was 18.

 

She won three gold medals at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and two golds and a silver in Melbourne four years later.

 

But Jawei's greatest moment came in the city of her birth last year when, together with Feng Tianwei and Wang Yuegu, she took the silver medal in the team event at the Olympics.

 

The medal came 48 years after Tan Howe Liang won the country's first medal, a silver in weighlifting, at Rome in the 1960 Games.

 

Jawei is considered to be among the most likely competitors to win Singapore's first-ever Olympic gold medal and she and her husband, 36-year-old Li Chao, who she married last September, have agreed to make that her priority.

 

She said: 'I'd like to get pregnant as soon as possible.

 

"But it's up to fate.

 

"If it doesn't happen in time, I will still continue to play - that is my promise to the STTA."