Tough draw for defending champ Zhang in Olympic table tennis

China' s table tennis Grand Slam winner Zhang Jike faces an uphill battle while defending his singles title in Rio Olympic Games after been drawn into the same half with Germany' s world No. 3 Dimitrij Ovtcharov here on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old Chinese, who beat compatriot Wang Hao in the men' s single final four years ago in London to complete his Grand Slam collection, is also in the same quarter with the 25th seed Chen Chien-An of Chinese Taipei and No. 16 seed Stefan Fegerl.

It means that Zhang, who slipped to world No. 2 in the latest ITTF rankings behind his Chinese teammate Ma Long, could meet almost half of the foreign players he had lost to in the past two years.

In the other half, top seed Ma Long was drawn into a possible fourth-round face-off with South Korea' s Jung Young Sik before probably facing the winner between Timo Boll and Chuang Chih-Yuan, while Japan' s top male paddler Jun Mizutani waits on the other end of the half.

For the women' s singles, defending champion Li Xiaoxia is the third seed and has to sit in the second half alongside with Singapore' s No. 2 seed Feng Tianwei to avoid the other Chinese player in the draw, the London Games' runner-up Ding Ning who is seeded on top in Rio.

If Li and Ding make an all-Chinese final to repeat their encounter of that in the 2012 London Games, they will be the first-ever pair of Olympic finalists to do so.

In the Olympic Games, singles events will follow a knockout format. Players ranked 1-16 will qualify directly to the third round, those ranked 17-32 to the second round, and those ranked 33 to the total number of participants will qualify to the first or preliminary rounds.

Sixteen teams will compete in the team events. In the men's team events, China has to beat South Korea in order to enter the finals, as runners-up in London 2012, Japan, were drawn into the second half with the 2008 Olympic silver medalists Germany.

On women' s part, battles may be more fierce in the early rounds for China as the defending champions will have to take on DPR Korea in order to make the semifinals, with another major opponents, Beijing Olympic silver medalists Singapore very probably waiting there.

Headed by Kasumi Ishikawa and Ai Fukuhara, the London silver medalists Japan will not encounter China until finals. China will open their campaign against hosts Brazil.

The team competition will also be played in a knockout format. The 16 participating teams were drawn into round one and progress to the finals. Therefore, to have a good draw is relatively more important. Endit