China eased to a second consecutive clean sweep of the Youth Olympic Games table tennis gold medals after edging Japan 2-1 in the mixed international team event here on Monday.
The mixed international team final was locked at 1-1 after singles victories for Sun Yingsha of China and Tomokazu Harimoto of Japan. It was then up to the deciding doubles match between the Japanese pair of Miu Hirano and Harimoto and Sun and Wang Chuqin. With China two games to the good, Wang let a ball pass by, assuming it was out.
It would have been 11-8 and game over. Wang, the gold medal winner in the men's singles event, believed the ball did not touch the table, but the judges disagreed and Japan stayed alive.
A few intense moments and a timeout from China later, and the Japanese were able to take the third game 14-12. China did not let the incident affect them, and Sun and Wang blitzed to an 11-5 victory in the fourth game to secure the title.
"I am happy about beating Wang in the singles, but it's a pity that Hirano and I eventually lost as a team," Harimoto said.
The bronze-medal match was every bit as thrilling as the gold decider, as Su Pei-Ling and Lin Yun-Ju, of Chinese Taipei, needed the full three matches and the whole five games to defeat Europe 1, comprised of Sabina Surjan of Serbia and Sweden's Truls Moregard. "We had many chances to win it, but we couldn't finish the job," Surjan said, before breaking down in tears.
