LONDON (AP) — Guess which nation won table tennis gold on Thursday.

China, of course.

The victory was guaranteed in a second all-China final in two days, this time with Zhang Jike defeating Wang Hao 4-1. Li Xiaoxia defeated teammate Ding Ning in Wednesday's women's final.

China has claimed 22 of 26 gold medals since pingpong was introduced at the Olympics in 1988.

Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany defeated Chuang Chih-Yuan of Taiwan for bronze.

The 24-year-old Zhang was too much for Wang, who lost his third straight Olympic final. Zhang also beat Wang in the final of last year's world championships.

Zhang celebrated by jumping over the yard-high barrier surrounding the court, raced to the nearby medal podium and knelt and kissed the top platform, designated for the gold medalist.

In his first Olympics, Zhang has been brash, predicting for days that he would win. He won a marathon first game 18-16 and hung on after Wang rallied to win the fourth game. Zhang closed it out in the fifth winning 13-11.

The two team events start next, with China expected to complete a four-medal sweep of gold, matching its performance at the Beijing Olympics four years ago.

The governing body of table tennis, the ITTF, has tried tinkering with rules to give others a better chance. This time only two singles players are allowed from a nation, down from three in Beijing. That guaranteed at least that a nation other than China would win bronze.

It also added to the crushing pressure for the Chinese to deliver in what is the national pastime for 1.3 billion. In the world championships, China enters seven or eight players in singles. There is no such cushion with only two in the Olympics.

China men's coach Liu Guoliang, a double gold medalist in 1996, would like to see a bit more competition.

"I'd be happy to see the overall standard improve," Liu said. "But of course, I want Chinese players to stay on top."

That seems inevitable. China's sports schools, in the style of those from the Soviet Union, keep producing great athletes. They're identified early and honed through thousands of hours of practice by the time they're teenagers.

Liu, who was on the bench to coach Zhang and Wang in the other matches, watched from the stands in the sold-out 6,000-seat venue — gargantuan by table-tennis standards.

"One is like an elder son, and the other is like a younger son," Liu said.

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Follow Stephen Wade at https://twitter.com/StephenWadeAP.