China wins all gold medals in table tennis and diving at 2024 Olympics

On the penultimate day of competition, China entered the finals to win the gold medal in table tennis in the women's team event, facing Japan in the final. The competition started with a doubles match, followed by four singles matches. The team that won three matches first would win the match.

China almost lost the first match when the pair Chen Meng - Wang Manyu let Hina Hayata - Miwa Harimoto take the lead twice. However, the bravery of the world number two and number three players still helped China equalize, before winning dramatically 12-10 in the deciding fifth set.

In the second match, world number one Sun Yingsha also had a hard time against Miu Hirano in the first set, at one point trailing 6-10, but still won 13-11. Overcoming the pressure helped Sun control the game and easily win the next two sets with the same score of 11-6.

A similar scenario played out in the third match, when Wang Manyu lost to 16-year-old Harimoto 12-14 in the first set, but won the remaining three sets to bring home the women's team gold medal for Ma Lin and her team.

Previously, China opened with a gold medal in mixed doubles, thanks to Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha. In the men's singles, although world number one Wang Chuqin unexpectedly stopped in the round of 16, number two Fan Zhendong made no mistake to win. Meanwhile, the women's singles was an internal battle between Sun Yingsha and Chen Meng, with the victory belonging to senior Chen as in Tokyo 2020. The fourth gold medal was in the men's team event when Ma Long, Wang Chuqin and Fan Zhendong showed their superior strength.

China became the first team to win all five table tennis gold medals at a single Olympics. At Tokyo 2020, a fifth event - mixed doubles - was introduced for the first time, but Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen lost shockingly to Japan's Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito in the final.

Table tennis was introduced to the Olympics for the first time in Seoul in 1988, with 38 medals, but China won 33 gold medals. The team has won all four gold medals in five editions: 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016. The remaining five gold medals belong to South Korea in men's singles in 1988, 2004 and women's doubles in 1988, Sweden in men's singles in 1992 and Japan in mixed doubles in 2000.

In addition to table tennis, China won all eight diving gold medals at the 2024 Olympics, in the 3m springboard and 10m platform for men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles and women's doubles, also on the evening of August 10.

The final event where China won gold was the men's 10m platform singles. After six jumps, Cao Yuan showed his superiority by scoring 547.5 points, while Japanese silver medalist Rikuto Tamai only scored 507.65 points, and Great Britain's bronze medalist Noah Williams scored 497.35 points.

Previously, 17-year-old prodigy Quan Hongchan continued to surprise in the women's 10m platform, scoring seven 10s in her first jump, and then winning the gold medal for the second consecutive time. She also won the gold medal in the women's 10m platform doubles with Chen Yuxi.

This is also the first time a team has won all diving gold medals since the sport first had eight medal events at Sydney 2000. China has won seven gold medals three times in 2008, 2016 and 2020. At that time, the teams that stopped China were Australia - 10m platform men's singles, Great Britain - 3m platform men's doubles (2016) and 10m platform men's doubles (2020).

Diving first appeared at the 1904 Olympics, with the United States dominating, leading the medal table in 15 of the 18 games until 1984. But since 1988, China has dominated, leading the medal table for 10 consecutive games.

In 130 medals, the US won 49 gold medals, while China had two fewer, but was almost certain to surpass them next time. Meanwhile, the third-placed team in history, Sweden, had only six gold medals.

China is the third team to dominate at least one sport at the 2024 Olympics. Previously, South Korea won all five gold medals in archery, while the Netherlands won two gold medals in hockey.

China leads the Olympic medal tally with 37 gold, 27 silver and 24 bronze medals. The United States is next (33-41-39), but the U.S. still has four finals to play in women's soccer, women's volleyball, women's basketball and men's basketball, as well as some track and field events.

In the previous edition, the US led with 39 gold medals, 41 silver medals and 33 bronze medals. Following were China (38-32-19) and Japan (27-14-17).