May 22, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 19,1424

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PARIS, May 21: German top seed Timo Boll suffered a shock second round defeat to a little known Chinese teenager at the table tennis world championships here on Wednesday.

The 22-year-old tournament favourite was beaten 4-2 (3-11, 7-11, 11-7, 14-12, 11-9, 12-10) by 18-year-old Qui Yike, the 40th seed.

Boll, from Erbach near Frankfurt, was gracious in defeat, saying: “It was fun to play him, but not fun to lose.”

Qui, who comes from the western Chinese province of Sichuan, came off court to be immediately enveloped in a media scrum.

Boll’s premature demise once again underlines the strength in depth of the Chinese, who for the past two world championships have walked off with all the gold medals.

The sport’s superpower has a history of supposedly lowly players doing well at the world championships including unseeded Yan Sen reaching the men’s singles semifinals in Manchester in 1997.

A warning that this might not be Boll’s day had come earlier Wednesday when he survived a first round scare against a Chinese export to the Dominican Republic.

Earlier Swedish table tennis legend Jan-Ove Waldner suffered an unscheduled first round defeat against a lowly-rated Greek opponent at the world championships here on Wednesday.

Waldner, out of action recovering from an ankle injury for the past eight months, blamed lack of match practise for his marathon 11/7, 7/11, 11/8, 5/11, 11/4, 8/11, 11/8 loss to qualifier Konstantinos Papageorgiou.

The 1989 and 1997 world champion shrugged: “The one positive I can take from this is that my ankle held up. I’m happy about that.—AFP