China complete table tennis clean sweep

The respective winners of the women’s and men’s individual tournaments, the duo saw off Japan’s Hirano Miu and Tomokazu Harimoto 2-1 in the final to give China a table tennis clean sweep at Buenos Aires 2018.

Sun put China on the road to another gold by defeating Miu in the opening match, just as she had done in the final of the women’s competition. The Japanese player led two sets to one only for Sun to hit back to win the next two 15-13 and 11-1. 

In a reverse of the men’s final, however, Harimoto defeated Wang to level the final at 1-1. Wang and Sun then came together to defeat the Japanese pair 3-1 (11-8 11-6 12-14 11-5) in the deciding rubber. The most dramatic point of the match came at the end of the third set. Holding match point, the Chinese believed they had won gold only for the Japanese to claim their shot had clipped the side of the table. The umpires ruled in Miu and Harimoto’s favour and they went on to claim the set. It proved to be only a temporary reprieve for the Japanese, however, as their opponents cruised to victory in the fourth set.

China won four of the five table tennis and badminton golds on offer at the Tecnópolis, with only the individual women’s badminton title escaping the grasp of their athletes. The country’s table tennis sweep was its second in a row, after Nanjing 2014.