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Wang Nan is upset after losing the game (Xinhua photo/Xu Jiajun)

Chinese Sydney Olympic double champion Wang Nan lost to Singapore's Li Jia Wei 4-1 Thursday evening and failed to make the women's singles semifinals in the table tennis tournament of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Wang lost the match 7-11, 7-11, 13-11, 9-11 and 8-11.

This was another severe blow to the ambitious Chinese, who had hoped to repeat their feat in Sydney with another clean sweep of the four table tennis golds on offer.

Wang, ranked world No.2 in singles, was totally overwhelmed by the 8th-ranked Singaporean throughout the match. Wang displayed some fighting spirit in the third and fourth games, when she caught up from 0-7 and 1-7 down to 10-10 and 9-9 draw, but let Li take the other three games without much difficulty.

"Li played very well tonight," said Cai Zhenhua, head coach of the Chinese table tennis team after the match. "Wang had some difficulty in judging the spins of Li's services and therefore became quite vulnerable for most of the time."

For the 23-year-old Singaporean, the victory was a sweet revenge for her loss to Wang in Sydney 2000, when she had taken a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five-set match and was 20-16 ahead in the fourth set, but only to let Wang stage a miraculous comeback and win 3-2.

Wang, who was crowned singles champion at the Sydney Games, also beat Li twice again in their encounters in the past years, including one in the 2002 Busan Asian Games, when Wang was in the worst form of her career.

Editor: Lin Shujun