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Two silvers cap top table tennis campaign

3 minute read

Australian table tennis has ended its most successful Paralympics campaign with two more silver medals in teams events.

Australia's Paralympic table tennis team have capped their unprecedented Games success with two silver medals.

In the last match of the sport's Tokyo schedule, Australia lost to China 2-0 in the men's Class 9-10 teams final on Friday, taking the silver.

Lian Hao and Zhao Yi Qing beat Ma Lin and Joel Coughlan 11-3 11-6 11-9 and then Lian accounted for Ma 11-7 11-5 11-4 in the singles, meaning there was no need for the singles clash between Zhao and Coughlan.

Australia had its best table tennis tournament at a Paralympics, winning two gold and four silver medals.

They are Australia's first table tennis Paralympic gold medals in 37 years.

Earlier on Friday, Lina Lei, Qian Yang and Melissa Tapper claimed silver in the women's team Class 9-10.

The Australians faced Poland in Friday morning's gold medal match but lost the tie 2-0.

Lei and Yang fronted up against Poland's Natalia Partyka and Karolina Pek in the doubles and fell agonisingly short, losing 3-2.

The Polish duo won just four more points for the entire match, claiming a 11-6 7-11 11-6 7-11 11-9 victory.

Yang then faced Partyka in the singles in a bid to get Australia back into the contest.

Yang had beaten Partyka in their singles semi-final earlier in the week, on her way to claiming gold, but the Polish superstar turned the tables on Friday, taking just 22 minutes to seal the team gold with a 3-0 win.

"(The Paralympics have) been good," Yang said.

"Singles (gold) was beyond my expectations. Today, our doubles performance wasn't great.

"For singles, it was different from the singles semi-finals when Partyka was more anxious. Today I was the one who was more anxious. I wanted to kill off points earlier and I made more errors today.

"I'll rate our team performance 80 and my singles (in the singles event) 95."

The third tie, a singles match between Tapper and Pek, wasn't required.

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