It marked the third Chinese gold in the event to follow earlier victories at Los Angeles 1984 and Athens 2004.
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Song Yang, the Chinese consul in Rio de Janeiro, immediately lodged a formal complaint with Rio authorities and expressed strong dissatisfaction with the incident, it said. Since then, Lang has become a national heroine, with her portraits appearing on postage stamps, while the women’s volleyball team is seen as a symbol of teamwork and persistence.
Over 10,000 Weibo users had commented on Huang’s post, with most echoing the views of one who said, “The incident is unbelievable and unforgivable, since the correct flags were made and sent to the venue last week”.
China entered the Rio Olympics as the No. 3 team in the world, but started out the Rio Olympics with a surprising loss to the Netherlands and finished just 2-3 in prelims.
“This team has an average age of 24”.
They lost the first game to the Netherlands before defeating them in the semi-final and eventually crushing Serbia to take the center of the women’s volleyball medal podium.
But Lang’s patriotism was questioned after she was hired to coach the U.S. women’s volleyball team and led the Americans to a silver medal in, of all tournaments, the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Chinese had much more fight still in them.
Zhao Dongming, the former cultural section chief of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games who was in charge of medal ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Games, was highly critical of Rio organisers.
They remained dominant in table tennis and won seven gold medals in diving, but even there their rivals seemed to be closing the gap.
Netizens’ disappointment is understandable, since China is among the top three in the medal tally, said Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, adding that China deserves more respect as one of the world’s most influential nations.
“They’ve remained trapped in a robotic style of training”, FIG president Bruno Grandi told AFP.
Their hands entwined, they sang in unison during the national anthem in an undeniably proud moment for the players, their supporters in the Rio stands and all of those others back home.
Official media also made great play of China’s surprise win against Serbia in the women’s volleyball on Saturday.
“As individuals, living in a time of drastic change with both opportunities and challenges, one needs the spirit to go sure-footed and step by step to reach afar”. Among the most prominent critics was China’s Go world champion Nie Weiping.
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“Her “prehistoric strength” as she put it fully demonstrated the modern Chinese athletes: they’re confident, they’re active and they’ve fully pushing forward”.
