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PARIS: North Korea won its first medal in eight years at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday but settled for silver after losing to table tennis superpower China in the mixed doubles event.
China arrived in Paris as the undisputed kings of world table tennis, having won 32 of the 37 gold medals offered since table tennis became an Olympic sport.
Three years ago, when the mixed doubles event was introduced at the Tokyo Olympics, Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha failed to win the championship, but they beat North Korea’s Lee Jong-sik and Kim Jin-young with a score of 11-6, 7-11, 11-8, 11-5, 7-11, 11-8, breaking the previous record.
This is the first gold medal that China is expected to sweep in the table tennis competition in the French capital.
For North Korea, concerns about the coronavirus prevented them from participating in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed due to the pandemic.
Lee Joon and Kim Joon-jung took the podium together with the bronze medal-winning Korean pair Lim Jong-hoon/Shin Yu-bin.
The South Paris Stadium was packed with standing spectators, and fans dressed in red cheered for the Chinese duo, who cheered and shouted throughout the game.
Wang Qiang and Sun Yingsha, who have not lost outside of China in four years and are the world’s top-ranked pair, took control of the match by winning the first game.
The North Korean team fought back hard and equalized the score, but the Chinese team won two consecutive games to bring the score closer to the edge of the gold medal.
North Korea pulled one back and held on to the lead, but China took the title at the end of a tense match.
Japan beat China in the first mixed doubles final of the Olympic Games in Tokyo to win the championship. —AFP
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