London - Beijing silver medallists Germany took bronze in the Olympic men’s table tennis tournament here, defeating Hong Kong Wednesday.
Germany’s Timo Boll won the first and last singles game to round off a 3-1 overall victory and cement his country’s status as the world’s top table tennis power outside Asia.
Boll took just 17 minutes to thrash Cy Leung 3-0 in the first match, with singles bronze medallist Dimitrij Ovtcharov downing Peng Tang 4-1 in the second.
Hong Kong took the doubles in straight sets before Boll came back from a set down to beat Jiang Tianyi 3-1, sparking wild celebrations from the German team.
Ukrainian-born Ovtcharov beat Chuang Chih-Yuan of Chinese Taipei for the singles bronze.
China look to complete a sweep of the table tennis gold medals when they face South Korea in the final later in the day.
common timo wen ru commin back to your old status the world champion.