Who says Ireland can't beat China at their own game? When the game in question is table tennis, and Team Ireland boasts just eight athletes while China fields a total of 56 - not to mention the fact that table tennis is pretty much the Chinese national sport - the tables might seem to be a little, um, loaded.
But that was before the green army invaded Minhang Gymnasium - yet another of Shanghai's apparently endless supply of massive and immaculate stadiums - where divisioning, a kind of preliminary round in which the athletes' skill levels are assessed in order to ensure that the competition is as fair as possible, got under way yesterday at 9am.
Twenty tables were laid out in the massive sports hall and the Irish players - Gerard McCormack, Mary Blair, Fergal Bolger, Bernadette Carroll, Pat Dorgan, Sharon Celine O'Brien, Anna Fitzsimons and Paul Sweeney - played some excellent, athletic table tennis in a series of short trial matches.
There were, however, murmurings in the dugout. "I reckon there's been a bit of sandbagging going on here this morning," says Frank O'Brien from Cobh, Co Cork, a volunteer who has been assigned to work with the Irish table tennis team for the duration of the games.
"There was a Chinese athlete playing a minute ago and you'd swear he'd never seen a table tennis table in his life - but one of our coaches saw him on a practice table downstairs, and he was really giving it welly."
Strange manoeuvrings have been known to take place during Special Olympics preliminaries; teams have been known to give an impression of weakness so as to get into a lower division and secure an "easy" passage to the finals.
It might, I suggest, be just a case of mistaken identity; winning at any cost is surely not in the spirit of Special Olympics?
Frank O'Brien knows all about spirit, having spent 37 years with the Army before he retired. "My first job was with the UN in the Congo in 1961," he said.
"At the tender age of 17. I've seen it all, over the years. But Special Olympics is something special. It's a big commitment for volunteers in terms of time and energy - but you get it back tenfold. Just to see the joy on the athletes' faces."
As we make our way to another part of the arena, where a band of Irish supporters have set up the Tricolour and a large banner, we hear what sounds like a humongous shower of rain. It has been another cloudless day in Shanghai, with a high of some 25 degrees, so we dash upstairs in surprise - to be greeted by the sight of nearly a thousand Chinese schoolchildren in uniform.
The noise we heard isn't rain, but the sound of these children applauding. They're being egged on by a Chinese girl clad in a green T-shirt and waving the Tricolour. "Okay," she tells them. "Now this one: Ire-land! Ire-land!" The kids are well up for it. "Ah-LAN! Ah-LAN!" they yell, waving their clackers in time to the beat.
Even when an Irish mixed doubles pair squares up to Chinese opposition, and - as far as we can tell, not that we're biased - dispatches them quite effortlessly, the kids keep up their applause and chanting.