How the sport works
In team table tennis, each team has three players. The first team to win the best of five games wins the overall match. Each game is played to eleven points. The first, second, fourth, and fifth games are played one-on-one while the third game is played doubles (that is, two players per team).
Let me clear up any confusion right off the bat: table tennis is ping pong. Yup, it's what you do in someone's basement and your host's mom will make everyone sandwiches and you'll all drink root beer and spend most of the afternoon chasing after the little ball as it inevitably rolls under the couch. But this is the Olympics and there are no couches here (although the players do in fact have to retrieve the balls themselves).
Like badminton, this sport is huge in parts of Asia so it wasn't a surprise that Singapore walloped Australia 3-0 or that Canada was easily beaten by number three ranked Japan. Russia lost to number one ranked China, but the Russians manages to take one game.
For me, the big excitement was to see number two South Korea take on North Korea. This was a preliminary round, so I'm guessing it was just a random pairing, but I imagine there was a good deal of pressure on both teams given the opponent.
In the athletes' section, there was a handful of North Korean coaches and athletes who had come to cheer on their comrades. Table tennis isn't the most rowdy of sports, so it may not come as a big surprise to you that the crowd was fairly sedate. That is, until the North Koreans got things started. That's right, a few North Koreans got the whole crowd cheering, chanting, and clapping! It was in Korean so I can't be entirely sure, but I swear that one of the North Koreans' cheers was about Kim Jong-un! (Amusing side note: in googling his name to make sure I spelled it correctly, I discovered his nicknames apparently include Lil Kim. Really?!) My sister-in-law did our bit to be neutral and cheered the one word we know in Korean, “Anyong!” In the end, the capitalists won 3-1, but the North Koreans played a great match.
And it was pretty cool to see the North and South Koreans shake hands after the match.
