16th seed in Paris and ranked 22nd in the World, the Canadian Men’s team bowed out to Germany who is 2nd seed in Paris and 2nd in the World Ranking.
Germany proved to be superior with its lead experienced veteran, Timo Boll, who scored two points for his team (in doubles and singles), plus highly-ranked Dimitri Ovtcharov scoring the 3rd point for Germany’s victory.
In the opening doubles match, the first game was won easily by Germany. However, the Canadian duo of Eugene Wang and Jeremy Hazin adjusted and played very well to win the second game. At this point, all seemed possible. Unfortunately, the German pair of Boll and Dang Qiu was more consistent and won the crucial points to end the doubles match in their favour 3-1.
The next match was the singles confrontation of first-time Olympian, Edward Ly of Canada, against the very experienced Ovtcharov who is at his 4th appearance at the Olympic Games and already has a Bronze medal from London. The scenario was like the doubles match with Ovtcharov winning the first game (close) and Edward winning the second game (also close), but Ovtcharov being more consistent and more aggressive ended the match 3-1.
The 3rd match in this team match saw the veteran players from each team, Eugene Wang of Canada against Timo Boll of Germany. The match was very close, but Timo Boll was able to end each game in his favour through better consistency.
Overall, Canada showed good resistance against Germany. The closeness of the match and competitiveness of all games within the match did not reflect the large difference in ranking. The Canadian players did their best but were outclassed by their German opponents. Our team was coached by Toronto’s HongTao Chen.
For Edward Ly, appearing at his first Olympic Games, this is an excellent start and we hope that our young players will be inspired and rise to the occasion at future Games.
The final score:
