China lose five-set thriller to Netherlands in Olympic women' s volleyball opener

Reigning World Cup champions and Olympic title favorites China lost to the Netherlands 3-2 here on Saturday in their opening match at the 2016 Rio Games women's volleyball competitions.

Lonneke Sloetjes scored game-high 26 points to lead the Dutch women to the 25-23, 21-25, 18-25, 25-22 and 15-13 victory in two hours and 11 minutes. Robin de Krujif and Anne Buijs added 15 and 14 points respectively.

"We played with very good discipline, everybody played very well today. It is an amazing start," said the Netherlands' Italian coach Giovanni Guidetti.

Despite the surprising loss, China head coach Jenny Lang Ping thought it was good learning experience for the young team.

"It's the first match of the Olympic Games and our young players were a little bit nervous. For such a young team like us, it's normal to have some ups and downs," said Jenny.

"We had some problem with our defense, blocking and receiving in the fourth set. In the tiebreaker, we were not so lucky and we lost some important points."

Zhu Ting led China with 24 points and 19-year-old Gong Xiangyu added 18, but some errors of the promising opposite spiker cost the Chinese women the victory.

"As an Olympic new comer, she played pretty well in the first four sets. In the fifth set, she made some unforced errors, but it's understandable. She is so young, she needs some more experience," Lang Ping said.

The Chinese women outblocked the Netherlands 15-9 and produced six aces, compared to three for the Netherlands, but still failed to claim an opening win in their Olympic campaign.

China will play Italy in their second pool B match on Monday while the Netherlands take on world champions the United States. Twelve teams are playing round robin preliminaries in two groups with top four finishers from each group to qualify for the quarter-finals. Endit