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Sydney double champion Wang Nan out of table tennis singles
Chinese Sydney Olympic double champion Wang Nan lost to Singapore's Li Jia Wei 4-1 Thursday evening and failed to make the women's singles semifinals in the table tennis tournament of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Wang lost the match 7-11, 7-11, 13-11, 9-11 and 8-11. This was another severe blow to the ambitious Chinese, who had hoped to repeat their feat in Sydney with another clean sweep of the four table tennis golds on offer. Wang, ranked world No.2 in singles, was totally overwhelmed by the 8th-ranked Singaporean throughout the match. Wang displayed some fighting spirit in the third and fourth games, when she caught up from 0-7 and 1-7 down to 10-10 and 9-9 draw, but let Li take the other three games without much difficulty. "Li played very well tonight," said Cai Zhenhua, head coach of the Chinese table tennis team after the match. "Wang had some difficulty in judging the spins of Li's services and therefore became quite vulnerable for most of the time." For the 23-year-old Singaporean, the victory was a sweet revenge for her loss to Wang in Sydney 2000, when she had taken a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five-set match and was 20-16 ahead in the fourth set, but only to let Wang stage a miraculous comeback and win 3-2. Wang, who was crowned singles champion at the Sydney Games, also beat Li twice again in their encounters in the past years, including one in the 2002 Busan Asian Games, when Wang was in the worst form of her career. "Despite all the previous losses, I always believe that I have the capability to beat her (Wang), because I play faster than she does," said Li after her Friday victory. "And I have enhanced the variation of services in today's match." She said that when Wang made a successful comeback again in the third game, she had reminded herself: "You must not let what happened in Sydney happen again!" Li's coach said that Wang seemed to have been playing under great pressure and was "a bit too soft and conservative" in the match. "Meanwhile, I have told my player to play as boldly and aggressively as possible, because we had nothing to lose and it would be quite normal if we lost the match," he added. Li said that generally speaking, Wang is still stronger than her both in skills and tactics. "But this is the Olympic Games, where skills and tactics are not everything," her coach said. Li, a handshake fast attacker who used to play for the Beijing Table Tennis Team in China, won her first pro tour singles champion in the U.S. Open in early July. "Winning that title has greatly boosted my self-confidence," she noted. In China, Li was known as a member of the so-called "overseas legion", a term referring to former Chinese players now playing for other countries and regions where they have obtained citizenship or right of abode. When the "overseas legion" first emerged, the Chinese table tennis officials had blamed them for defeating Chinese players in some crucial matches in major tournaments. But in recent years, they had adopted a much more open attitude and even called it a good thing for the popularization of the sport worldwide. After her loss, Wang left the court immediately and didn't pick up any questions from reporters waiting in the mixed zone. The disqualification from the singles has prevent Wang from emulating her predecessor Deng Yaping, who had reigned in the women's table tennis and bagged four Olympic golds in Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996. Some Chinese media reported that this Olympic tournament would be Wang's swan song as she planned to retire afterwards, though Wang didn't confirm it herself. But Wang still had a chance to win her third Olympic gold as she and teammate Zhang Yining Thursday entered the women's doubles final. They will play South Korean pair Lee Eun Sil/Seok Eun Mi Friday afternoon for the first table tennis gold in Athens. Zhang, world No.1 singles, also beat Croatia's Tamara Boros 4-0 Thursday evening to secure one place for China in the Olympic singles last four. She will take on South Korean chopper Kim Kyung Ah in the semifinals. Results of women's singles Olympic table tennis quarterfinals
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