US BEATS ROMANIA!

Yay for the US women's team! This morning, they got one step closer to the bronze medal, beating Romania 3-1. Wang Chen played first against Romania's Elizabeta Samara, and lost 3-1 (9, -6, 7, 9), but Gao Jun coasted through her match against Daniela Dodean, winning in straight sets (7, 6, 6). Evidently, Gao's experience, calm and cool personality, and of course her playing style (penhold, & pips) trumped youth, speed, and power. Crystal/Gao won relatively easily over Iulia Necula/Samara 3-1 (8, 7, -16, 7). Finally, Wang Chen took care of Necula easily in straight sets (5, 6, 2). Next they play Korea, who lost to Singapore in the first leg of the gold/silver playoffs, and if US beats Korea, they move on to play the winner of Japan/Hong Kong (Japan beat Austria 3-0 in the other leg of the bronze playoffs, and Hong Kong will almost definitely lose to China in the other leg of the gold/silver playoffs, which start in about a half hour). Since 2 of Korea's players are choppers and our veterans, particularly Gao Jun, have basically no issues with defensive players, we definitely have a good shot at winning; if we had to play Singapore, we could have basically counted ourselves out, but playing against Korea is a much better match-up.

In other Olympic news, USA's Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson took the gold and silver medals, respectively, in the women's individual all-around (gymnastics), and Phelps coasted to his 6th gold medal in the men's 200m individual medley, helping to put USA ahead of China in number of medals. USA now has amassed 44 medals (with 14 golds, 12 silvers, and 18 bronzes), and China has 37 (with 23 golds, 9 silvers, and 5 bronzes). I also saw my first Olympic event today, watching USA play Cuba in baseball, and was sorely disappointed at USA's 5-4 loss in 11 innings. To make things worse, Taiwan lost to China (really, how embarrassing...) in the adjacent ballpark 8-7 in the 12th. In any case, it was a good day, because the new ballparks (built just for the Games) are beautiful. That's all for now, but let's keep our fingers crossed for the US, who plays Korea at 10am on 8/16/08 (Beijing time)!