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Beijing Olympics: Six Times Olympian in the Semis!

Sweden’s Jörgen PERSSON is about to add another chapter to his incredible career. Olympian in 1988 where table tennis made its debut, semi-finalist 2000 in Sydney, world singles champion 1991, four times world team champion, married and father of three children, the Swede today reached the semi-final of the Olympic Men’s Singles event.

PERSSON already retired but came back to participate for the sixth times at Olympic Games. Today the tall Swede beat Croatia’s Zoran PRIMORAC in the quarter-final with four games to one. In the semi-final PERSSON (number 34 in the ITTF World Ranking) will face WANG Hao. The world number one overcame KO Lai Chak from Hong Kong China 4-1.

“The Chinese Wall is breakable”, said the 42 year old Swede, “even though it looks quite solid, I think I have a chance.” PERSSON continued: “The Chinese have made a lot of progress, physically and on their backhand side.”

Zoran PRIMORAC (CRO), also a six times Olympic participant, found the right words after the match in spite of the deception.”It’s very funny to play against PERSSON, because I may be one of the oldest players but he is even older than me”, 39 year old PRIMORAC was quoted. “I played well but he played better this time. He played very aggressively today. I really would have liked to play against the Chinese players.”

A Lonely Swede Challenging China
The Chinese hosts, winner of the gold medal in the team event, are represented with three players in the semi-finals. World number one WANG Hao, MA Lin (no. 2) and WANG Liqin (no. 4) have good prospects to win all the medals.

The three heroes, that already won gold in the Olympic team event as well as the gold medal about six month ago at the Evergrande World Team Table Tennis Championships, seem nearly unbeatable. Almost all big titles in the last years have gone to one of these three players.

WANG Liqin was full of confidence after his 4-0 win over TAN Ruiwu (CRO). ”I have already played three Singles matches and also the Team event. I think I am starting to become accustomed to the atmosphere and environment, and have accumulated experience.”

WANG’s next opponent is MA Lin, who beat Korea’s OH Sang Eun in his quarter-final against Korea’s OH Sang Eun. The two players already faced each other in the team event. On the contrary to the match six days ago, where MA only won 3-2, the competition today ended 4-0 in favour of MA. OH missed good chances in the third and in the fourth game to make it a closer match.

ITTF Press Release


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