With great confidence and a nearly perfect performance, the valiant
women paddlers from the DPR Korea gave a shock 3-1 defeat to the
all-star Chinese, who had dominated the world's women table tennis
events for more than a decade, and were crowned champions in the
14th Asiad table tennis team final here Friday evening.
"The DPR Koreans played an excellent game tonight, but the defeat
was not a bad thing for us," commented Chinese head coach Cai
Zhenhua. "This match has exposed our hidden problems and we will
sure learn from it."
At
a press conference after the medal-awarding ceremony, coaches and
players of the DPR Korean team said that it was hard for them to
express their feelings about the hard-won victory.
The Chinese women's team had beaten the DPR Koreans twice in the
previous Asian Games in Bangkok and also last year's Osaka world
championships.
"We played very well today, but the Chinese team's performance and
physical conditions also appeared to be not so good as usual,
especially compared with the previous matches we played, in which
they had thrown us out," said the DPR Korean head coach.
None of the team's secretary general, head coach and four players
that showed up in the interview room, with gold medals on their
necks, gave any apparent sign of overjoy or excitement.
But the head coach said that he was "extremely happy" for the win.
"While we were training very hardly, we believed that one day we
could win, and the day has come in Ulsan," he added.
Kim Hyang Mi, the DPR Korean player who had taken out world No.1
Wang Nan in a shocking 3-0 straight win in the second match, was
undergoing a doping test and missed the press conference.
Actually, in the past 16 years since 1986, the Chinese women only
lost the team title twice in major competitions, once to South
Korea in the 1986 Seoul Asiad and the other to a joint squad of the
DPR Korean and South Korean players in the 1991 world
championships.
However, the DPR Koreans' victory was quite convincing as they
claimed two points from dual Olympic and world champion Wang Nan,
and the other point from China's young star Li Nan, now ranked
4thin the world. China's world No.2 Zhang Yining contributed her
team's only victory in the opening match.
The Chinese players played very tensely as their top player Wang,
obviously out of form, conceded the second match easily.
Kim Hyon Hui, another key player for the DPR Korea who also beat
Wang 3-1 in the critical fourth match, said at the press conference
that she had met Wang four to five times in major games previously
but had never gained a win.
"But today from the very beginning of the last game I played
against her, I had a strong confidence that I would take the
victory," she added. Kim won the game 13-11.
Chinese women's team coach Li Xiaodong said that he thought Wang
had tried her best during the match, but she might have been
affected by her waist injury.
He
also expressed regret on Li Nan's losing of the third match, as the
young player had led by 8-5 in the deciding game, but only to be
overwhelmed at last by Kim Yun Mi 9-11.
"She was still young and was a bit nervous during the intense
match," he added.
Wang Nan had refused to give any comment on her defeat after the
match.
The final began at 8:10 p.m., delayed by more than three hours due
to lengthy semi-finals between the DPR Korean and the Japaneseand
the South Korean and Chinese Taipei men.
But Friday turned out to be the Korean's lucky day as both teams
from the Korean Peninsular scored three victories in a row.
The DPR Koreans fought for over three hours to conquer their
Japanese opponents 3-2, taking revenge for a humiliating
preliminary group upset. The Chinese women had finished the other
semifinal against Singapore at least one and a half hours
earlier.
As
Wang and her teammates, looking a bit frustrated, passed Cai, who
was circled around by a dozen Chinese journalists seeking comments
immediately after the match, the Chinese head coach broke the press
encirclement to wave to his paddlers and shout loudly: "Forget it,
just play well in the individual events."
"It is very important for them to walk out of the shadow cast by
this defeat," Cai explained.
"We had never expected today's defeat, but it should not undermine
our self-confidence as we still remain strong contenders for the
individual golds," said Li Xiaodong.
(
October 5, 2002)