DEFENDING Olympic champions China will face Japan in the men’s table tennis final today, after beating South Korea in the semis.

    While South Korea fought hard to match their opponents point for point in some sets during the Monday meeting, they eventually had to admit a 3-0 defeat to the Chinese team, made up of individual gold and silver medalists Ma Long and Zhang Jike as well as world number three Xu Xin.

    After a tough first match between Zhang and South Korea’s Jeoung Young-sik, Ma quickly overcome Lee Sangsu in the second and it was wrapped up by Zhang and Xu in the third and doubles match against Jeoung and Joo Saeh-yuk.

    Earlier in the day the Japanese men’s team avenged their women counterparts’ painful semifinals loss by beating Germany to secure a spot in the final, and also guaranteed themselves the country’s first medal in the men’s team event in the process.

    While Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov started strongly to take the first game over Maharu Yoshimura, they eventually faltered to lose 3-1 to Japan, who were anchored by the explosive spins of individual bronze medalist and world number six Jun Mizutani.

    “Japan played really strong today, the best match they’ve ever played against us I would say, especially Mizutani ... They were really unstoppable today,” said Timo Boll of Germany, which will now play South Korea for the bronze.

    China’s Xu said they would not go easy on Japan. “We’re going to put our all into the match. Now that Japan has made it to the final they will definitely work hard against China and fight,” he said.

    “Their win against the Germany has boosted their confidence, we will take factors like these into account when preparing for the match.”

    On the women’s side, the Chinese women’s team claimed another 3-0 victory earlier Monday morning over former runners-up Singapore to set up a clash with Germany, the debutants to an Olympic table tennis final.

    Singles silver medalist Li Xiaoxia opened the match for China, beating Singapore’s No. 1 and her club teammate in China’s Super League Feng Tianwei 12-10, 11-8, 11-9.

    Newly crowned singles champion Ding Ning then came out the sole Chinese surrendering a game in her team event play, overcoming Zhou Yihan 11-7, 9-11, 11-6, 11-2, before Ding and her pairing partner Liu Shiwen made short work of Zhou and Yu Mengyu 11-4, 11-1, 11-9.

    The Japanese women’s table tennis team missed out on a second successive trip to the Olympic final after being outlasted 3-2 by Germany at the Rio Games on Sunday.

    Four of the five matches went to five games and while the Japanese team received a valiant effort from Kasumi Ishikawa, who won twice, it lost the first and last match as well as the doubles. Japan, which won silver medal at London 2012, will now play for bronze against Singapore.

    (SD-Xinhua)