They were smiling, as the ambience in the stadium was gearing up with much festive mood in the air. Yes, they were much more relaxed now than when they were fighting it out with South Korea just two days ago. Li Jiawei and Wang Yuegu were loosening up, with smiles on their faces as they finished off the competition in the last match.

But the situation wasn’t so relaxed half an hour ago. In fact, it was tense as Jiawei battled against World No.1 Zhang Yining in the singles. To an untrained, amateur spectator’s eyes, I felt that perhaps Jiawei could brush up on her skills of strategic playing. Assessing her opponents as quickly as she can and map out a strategy to hit on their weakness. I just thought that while Yining seemed to have sussed her out, Jiawei wasn’t in that form yet.  

Nevertheless, our Singapore table-tennis team, led by captain Li Jiawei, won a Silver medal for us! Big congratulations to all of them and to all Singaporeans cheering out there.

When the dust settled and the outcome was finalised, immediately I took out my mobile and sms Stuart and my sister the good news. Yes, although we lost to China, we still won, in a sense.

Grabbing my camera which was dangerously low on battery as the red icon kept flashing at the top corner of the screen, I quickly shot these scenes through the TV. (Something is terribly wrong with my card reader and I just cannot transfer the photos. When I fix this problem up, I’ll post them here.)

In London 2012, we’ll be back.

P.S: Oh, if it is of any pride to us, the China team used the longest time (close to 2 hours) in this team competition to beat their opponents. And Singapore had the honour to be that team to “ruffle” them.