10:30 AM
China put on a display worthy of their name in a 3-0 dismantling of Singapore to reach Tuesday night’s gold medal match. The result was never in doubt as the Chinese led from the get go, dropping just one set in the match.
Li Xiaoxia got her team off to a hot start, sweeping her singles line over Feng Tianwei 3-0. While Feng was able to keep the individual points competitive, it felt at times that Li needed to simply flip a switch to put the result in her favor. The singles silver medalist took the line 12-10, 11-8, 11-9.
She was followed up by the woman who bested her in the gold medal match, Ding Ning. Ding was able to easily take the first game off Zhou Yihan at 11-7, but dropped the second set 11-9 to even the affair. That seemed to wake up the world No. 2, as she turned things up to eleven to take the next two games in routs, putting the Chinese a game away from advancing to the gold medal match.
They would punch their ticket in the doubles match. Ding was accompanied by Liu Shiwen, and the duo did not dilly dally. The Chinese team took care of business in quick order, winning 11-4, 11-1, 11-9 to take the penultimate step to gold.
China will now face Germany in the gold medal match Tuesday evening looking to defend their gold medal from London.
More table tennis is on the way from the Riocentro with the men’s semifinals set to begin at 2:00 PM ET and streaming live on NBCOlympics.com.