South Korea crashed Hong Kong, China Sunday to book a place in fighting for bronze at men's table tennis team event of the Beijing Olympic Games.
In the opening tie, 15th-ranked Oh Sang Eun built up South Korea's advantage after racing past Cheung Yuk of Hong Kong 3-1.
Oh fought a thrilling battle against China's four-time World Cup winner Ma Lin Saturday evening and was edged out 2-3.
Defending singles champion Ryu Seung Min had a hard time against veteran Li Ching who led 2-0 in the first two sets but was overtaken by Ryu, forcing a fifth decisive fifth set. Li steadies himself to play ball to ball and took the tiebreaker 11-7 before clinch a 3-2 victory for Hong Kong.
Being leveled 1-1 on set, Athens silver medalist LI Ching/Ko Lai Chak did not hold off ferocious charges of Yoon Jae Young/ Ryu Seung Min in doubles event and dropped the match 2-3.
Ko Lai Chak, who tried his best on court, but failed to keep Hong Kong's dream to battle for bronze alive after being elimilated by Oh 2-3 in the tiebreaker.
Meanwhile, a gruelling battle was put up on stage between Japan and Austria. Japan pitted Kan Yo, Jun Mizutani Seiya Kishikawa against Austria's line-up of 2003 world champion Werner Schlager, Chen Weixing and Robert Gardos.
Japanese squad trailed all the way to lose the match 1-3 despite the opening 1-0 lead clinched by Kan over Schlager.
South Korea and Japan succumbed to China and Germany Saturday to miss their chances to advance to the gold-medal match.
Austria will compete with South Korea for the third-place finisher before China takes on Germany for the final Monday evening.
The table tennis tournament, held in the 8,000-seat stadium in Peking University, is scheduled to last 11 days starting from Aug. 13.
(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2008)