Turkey upset China, Japan sweep Kenya in Olympic women's volleyball openers

Turkey celebrate their surprise win over China at Tokyo 2020 on July 25, 2021. (Xinhua/Yang Shiyao)

China's women's volleyball team opened their Olympic title defense with a straight-set defeat to Turkey.

TOKYO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Reigning Olympic champion China suffered a surprising straight-sets loss to Turkey, while Japan smashed Kenya as the Tokyo 2020 women's volleyball competition kicked off here on Sunday.

Jenny Lang Ping's side was outclassed 25-21, 25-14 and 25-14 in only 80 minutes at the Ariake Arena, staging the biggest upset of Pool B's first competition day.

Turkey's Ebrar Karakurt was on fire to slam 16 kills and grabbed a game-high 18 points. China's captain Zhu Ting was substituted twice and only scored four points in an injury-affected performance.

"We were really ready [to defend against Zhu] when she was attacking us, we took almost all the ball when she attacked us," said Cansu Ozbay, Zhu's former teammate at Turkey's VakifBank Sports Club.

Notably, Turkey's head coach Giovanni Guidetti also led the Netherlands to upset China in the Rio 2016 campaign openers.

Elsewhere in Pool B, Italy celebrated an easy 25-23, 25-19, 25-14 victory over the Russia Olympic Committee (ROC) team, while the United States romped past Argentina 25-20, 25-19, 25-20.

Pool A competition saw Japan have no difficulty in taking the first and second sets 25-15, 25-11 over Kenya.

However, the inexperienced African team then tested the host side with strong resistance before Japan won the third set 25-23.

Serbia players celebrate during their win over the Dominican Republic. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)

Another Pool A match saw Serbia defeat the Dominican Republic 25-18, 25-12, 25-20, as well as Brazil's perfect 3-0 (25-10, 25-22, 25-19) win over South Korea.

12 teams are playing in two preliminary pools in a round robin format, with the top four finishers from each pool qualifying for the quarterfinals.