Olympics table tennis 2016 results: August 6
Day one of 2016 Rio Olympics table tennis is in the books and the preliminary round weeded out the weak from the strong contenders.
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The preliminaries and the first round of Olympics table tennis have finally gotten underway and both the men and women’s singles have gotten started with plenty of action on August 6.
During the 2012 London Olympics, China took both the men’s and women’s singles as well as team gold medals. They dominated the table tennis field and very few teams had a chance to contend for gold. Some of the top contenders for gold four years ago had a bye in the preliminary and first round of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Let’s take a look at who the winners of each matchup on day one were.
Men’s singles preliminaries
Paraguay’s Marcelo Aguirre beat Australia’s Dave Powell and Mexico’s Marcos Madrid beat Vanuatu’s Yoshua Shing both in 4-to-0 sweeps. Iran’s Nima Alamian defeated United States’ Kanak Jha 4-to-1. Puerto Rico’s Brian Afanador defeated Congo’s Suraju Saka 4-to-3 as did Congo’s Jianan Wang against Egypt’s Khalid Assar.
Serbia’s Aleksander Karakasevic took down Australia’s Chris Xin Yan four games to two.
Women’s singles preliminaries
The women’s prelims had a handful of four games to zero sweeps including Egypt’s Dina Meshref over Tunisia’s Safa Saidani, Mexico’s Yadira Silva over Syria’s Heba Allejji, Nigeria’s Offiong Edem over Fiji’s Sally Yee and Congo’s Xing Han defeating the Philippines’ Ian Lariba. Dominating performance by the quartet of performers.
Carolina Kumahara of hosting Brazil took down Australia’s Melissa Tapper 4-to-2 and Nigeria’s Olufunke Oshonaike defeated Lebanon’s Mariana Sahakian 4-to-3.
Men’s first round
The real action took place as the first round got underway in the evening. Finland’s Benedek Olah started things off with a victory in five games over Singapore’s Chen Feng. Other first round victors included Uzbekistan’s Zokhid Kenjaev, Poland’s Jakub Dyjas, Brazil’s Hugo’s Calderano, Thailand’s Padasak Tanviriyavechakul, Hungary’s Adam Pattantyus, Slovenia’s Bojan Tokic, Canada’s Eugene Wang, Nigeria’s Segun Toriola, Romania’s Adrian Crisan and Spain’s He Zhiwen.
Playing later in the day on Saturday and coming out on top were Great Britain’s Paul Drinkhall, Romania’s Ovidiu Ionescu and Yang Wang of Slovakia.
These men’s winners will move onto the second round on Sunday.
Women’s first round
Advancing to the second round in the women’s singles were Brazil’s Lin Gui, Canada’s Zhang Mo, Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz, Thailand’s Nanthana Komwong, United States’ Yue Wu, Australia’s Jian Fang Lay and Belarus’ Aleksandra Privalova.
Also making it through to round two Poland’s Grzybowska-Franc, Barbora Balazova of Slovakia, Ivete Vacenovska of the Czech Republic, Lily Zhang of the U.S., Viktoria Pavlovich from Belarus, Daniela Monteiro Dodean from Romania, Hungary’s Petra Lovas, Thailand’s Suthasini Sawettabut and Luxembourg’s Ni Xialian.
Some played on Saturday night in round two while the rest will perform on Sunday in rounds two as well as three.
Women’s second round
A number of women competed for a chance to play in the third round on Sunday as there were a few second round matches taking place on Saturday night.
Elizabeta Samara swept Brazil’s Lin Gui. Tatyana Bilenko of Ukraine and Lily Zhang of the United States also came out with clean sweeps, advancing to the third round on Sunday.
North Korea’s Kim Song I, Hungary’s Georgina Pota, Sweden’s Matilda Ekholm, Australia’s Jian Fang Lay and Romania’s Daniela Monteiro Dodean also went on to the third round which will be played Sunday.
The United States’ Yue Wu was eliminated from gold medal contention.