Table tennis: Olympic silver for Sweden – lost to China in the table tennis final

China continues its dominance in the team game of table tennis. Since it became an Olympic discipline at the Beijing Games in 2008, the country has taken all five golds. For Sweden, the silver is the first ever medal in team play.

Despite a convincing 3-0 in matches against the grand champions, Sweden offered resistance.

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– We felt the whole time that we never give up. Unfortunately, China is a notch too good today, says Kristian Karlsson.

Five sets in all matches

All matches required a fifth and decisive set. First in the doubles when Ma Long and Wang Chuqin defeated Anton Källberg and Kristian Karlsson. Match number two was a replay between the finalists in the singles game, Truls Möregårdh and Fan Zhendong.

Wang Chuqin was then able to secure the gold for China by defeating Kristian Karlsson in the final match. At 2–0 and a match point for Wang at 10–9, International Table Tennis Federation President Petra Sörling left her seat next to King Carl XVI Gustaf in the stands to attend the award ceremony. Karlsson made sure that the wait was considerably longer than most people thought in the hall, where Chinese fans were in a large majority.

– It was actually a fantastic effort. We lost 3-0, but it was much more even than the numbers show, says Mikael Appelgren, who won four World Cup gold medals in team and doubles in the 80s and 90s.

Appelgren believes that the team silver, together with Truls Möregårdh’s individual silver, is significantly better than expected.

– Two silvers we couldn’t have dreamed of before, incredibly fun for Swedish table tennis.

Sweden’s team silver in table tennis