Ma Long of China celebrates after winning his gold medal table tennis match against compatriot Zhang Jike at the Riocentro Pavilion 3, Rio de Janeiro August 11, 2016.
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The men’s final might have lacked the edge of the seat excitement of the previous night’s women’s final in which Ding Ning edged Li Xiaoxia after seven electric games.
China’s top seed Ma Long made up for being excluded from the singles in 2012 by sweeping aside defending champion Zhang Jike to claim the Olympic men’s table tennis gold yesterday.
It looks like he will never have had a better opportunity to earn the medal he has craved for so long.
It was clear that Samsonov, the world tour’s most well-credentialed senior citizen who is competing at his sixth games in Rio, would not lie down without a fight in his first Olympic medal match, and so it was as he rallied to take the third 11-6.
The following games thus went in favor of Ma, who led 6-2, 10-4 in the second set with fast and flawless reaction and kept it that way.
While he made some fans nervous by losing two sets in his fourth round match against South Korea’s Jeoung Young-sik before staging a 4-2 comeback, he was ruthless in the final as he beat Zhang 4-0.
For Samsonov, it was too hard of a matchup, as Mizutani’s aggressiveness overwhelmed his defensive style of play.
There were plenty of points during which Samsonov was two or three feet away from the table, fighting off Mizutani’s smashes until one of his shots went awry.
After granting the fourth set 11-6, Zhang, who was a two-time world champion, hesitated no more and led 5-1 in the decisive fifth before he forced his opponent to return it wide to win 11-9.
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Stats courtesy of Rio2016.com.
