ANALYSIS: Australia's Jian Fang Lay is one of the best reasons to love the Tokyo Olympics
The basic outline was unlikely: late in the evening, the dead of winter, a 48-year-old playing table tennis in a deserted stadium at an event that nobody really wanted to happen.
On Saturday, she became the first Australian woman to compete in six Olympic Games and made light work of Cuba's Daniela Fonceca in the morning preliminaries.In the round one night session, the 156th-ranked veteran took on Italy's Debora Vivarelli, ranked in the 70s, with a right-handed shakehand grip and all the physical advantages of being 20 years younger than one's opponent.
But Lay squeezed her and the errors came, and soon it was all over — a 4-1 victory to the Australian in 31 minutes.
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