(by Steve Hopkins)

The Olympic Games are just underway and most of the big named players won’t be in singles action for a few more days, but preliminary rounds are going on this weekend – as are early doubles rounds.

Two TeamUSA players competed on the first day and both scored 4-1 wins.  Liu Juan beat her Nigerian opponent, Olufunke Oshonaike and Nikhil Kumar topped his Mongolian opponent, Lkhagvasuren Enkhbat.  Both were also successful in their second match with Liu topping Spain’s Galia Dvorak 4-1, and Kumar topping Ecuador’s Alberto Mino 4-2.   We’ll continue to provide TeamUSA updates as Liu and Kumar move forward, and as Kanak Jha and Lily Zhang play their first matches.  Some other regional players in action fared less well – Puerto Rico’s Melanie Diaz fell to a Thai player 0-4, Brian Afanador (Puerto Rico) lost a close match to Hong Kong’s Siu Hang Lam, and Canada’s Jeremy Hazin fell 0-4 to Slovakia’s Bojan Tokic.

Mixed Doubles is now underway underway with the top 16 teams in action.  Of the 8 matches played, three were upsets.  The top seeded Chinese team (Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen) beat the Canadian team of Eugene Wang and Mo Zhang 4-1.  The second seeded Romanian team (Ionescu/Szocs) defeated Slovakia 4-1.  The third seeded French team of Lebesson and Yuan dominated their British opponents 4-0.  Things got more interested as the teams became closer in the seedings.

The fifth seeded Taipei team (Ling Yun Ju and Cheng I-Ching) easily beat India and the seventh seeded Germany team of Franziska and Solja dominated Cuba 4-0, but the 4th, 6th, and 8th seeded teams all fell in upsets.  The fourth seeded Hungarian Team (Szudi/Pergel) was pounded by Hong Kong’s Wong and Doo 0-4.  The sixth seeded Egyptian team of Assar/Meshref fell 1-4 to Korea’s Sangsu Lee and Jihee Jeon.  The 8th seeded Austrian team of Fegerl/Polcanova fell 4-1 to Japan’s Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito.  More Mixed Doubles action is scheduled tomorrow.

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