China goes 1-2 again in table tennis

Zhang Jike defeated Wang Hao in five games Thursday to win the men's singles gold medal in another all-Chinese Olympic table tennis final. For the second straight Olympics, both the men's and women's singles finals were a matchup of players from China. Zhang came into the Olympics ranked first in the world and Wang was second and those seedings prevailed. Zhang won 18-16, 11-5, 11-6, 10-12, 13-11. The bronze medal went to Dimitriji Ovtcharov of Germany, who defeated Taiwan's Chih-Yuan Chuang in six games. This was the third straight Olympics Wang has lost in the Olympic championship match. He has a gold medal, however, in the team event that made its debut in Beijing four years ago and will be contested again later in these Games. Anything other than a Chinese win in that competition would be an upset of enormous proportion. Ovtcharov was trying to become the first European to win an Olympic table tennis gold medal in 20 years, but he lost to Zhang in the semifinals in five games.