Table tennis teams fall in semifinals and settle for Pan Am bronze
On the first medal day Canada won a pair of table tennis bronze despite losing both team semifinals; the sport awards bronze medals to each semifinal loser.
Men’s team
The Brazilians wore down Canada’s men to win a best-of-five team semifinal 3-0 on Tuesday.
Marko Medjugorac during table tennis competition at TO2015.
In the first of two singles matches Ottawa’s Eugene Wang took Hugo Calderano all the way to five games but fell 3-2. From there it was a four-game victory for Gustavo Tsuboi over Canada’s Pierre-Luc Theriault; Thiago Monteiro and Gustavo Tsuboi then closed it out with a 3-0 doubles win over Marko Medjugorac and Theriault. This made two more singles matches unnecesary.
Women’s team
In the morning the United States swept Canada in a team semifinal to advance to the gold medal game. The Canucks won bronze.
Canadian coach Junya Chen (left to right), Anqi Luo, Mo Zhang, and Alicia Côté celebrate their TO2015 bronze medal.
The team event includes two singles matches before (and if necessary after) a doubles match. It’s best-of-five. In addition to losing 3-0 the Canadians didn’t win any games within matches.
Two-time Olympian Mo Zhang fell to Jiaqi Zheng in match one before American Lily Zhang topped Mississauga’s Anqi Luo. That left it up to a duo of 15-year-old Alicia Côté and Zhang to keep it going. They could not, bettered by Yue Wu and Jiaqi Zheng.
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Singles competition runs July 22-25 at the Markham Pan Am Centre.
