Beijing, Aug 9 (PTI) The US has pipped China in the medal rush at the Tokyo Olympics, barely retaining its top slot by staving off a close challenge mounted by Beijing amid their bitter geo-strategic rivalry spilling into the sports arena.

Team USA managed to regain the top slot in one of the closest-run contests of the entire Tokyo games with team China breathing down their necks in a host of events.

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China, which had led the medal table for 11 straight days, were pipped at the post by the US when the Chinese athletes failed to win a gold medal on the final day of the games that began on July 23 and ended on August 8.

The US team finally fished with 39 gold, 41 silver and 33 bronze medals, against China's 38 gold, 32 silver and 18 bronze. Host nation Japan finished third.

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“We are thrilled by the performance of Team USA – and couldn't be more proud of the way they carried themselves,” said Susanne Lyons, chair of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

“These Games are one for the history books,” Lyons was quoted by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Monday.

The Chinese delegation hailed the result as the “best achievement in an overseas Olympics”, equalling the 2012 London Olympics.

China had an opportunity to add to its gold count on the final day – women's middleweight boxer Li Qian was beaten in the gold medal bout by Great Britain's Lauren Price – but Beijing will rue falling short in events they were perhaps expected to win.

Despite near-total domination in the diving pool again, China fell short in the synchronised 10-metre platform discipline, the only gold medal they did not take in diving, the report said.

Worse, China's supremacy in table tennis came under challenge as it could finish with four out of the five golds.

China fielded the largest contingent of 777, which included 431 athletes, comprising of 298 women and 133 men, besides 307 coaches and 39 staff.

It was the largest contingent sent by China for Olympics as it fielded 639 in Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The Tokyo games took place amid fierce rivalry between the US and China, the top two economies of the world, especially over the origin of the coronavirus which had emerged first in Wuhan.

China is resisting efforts for an international investigation headed by WHO to probe the virus origin including the allegation that it had emerged from bio lab in Wuhan.

China is also battling allegations of genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, suppression of human rights in Hong Kong and Tibet. The two countries were also involved in a bitter trade war.

“The Tokyo Olympics was also held against the backdrop of serious geopolitical turmoil,” state-run Global Times said in its editorial on the Tokyo Olympics and credited Beijing's success to the one-party political system headed by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).

“China's new type of whole nation system has proven its vitality through the Tokyo Games. Some Western media outlets have nit-picked with hype that China's whole nation system is ‘inhuman. Domestically in China, there is also similar opinion,” it said.

“However, the new iteration of this system has gone through various tests in the past years and has been in dynamic improvement. It is proven to be effective and also suitable for China in addition to being more and more supported by the Chinese public,” it said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)