中国里约奥运首日表现回顾

It sure is not a familiar feeling, but anyone who follows sports knows, there is no such thing as a guaranteed gold medal.

Chinese veteran shooter Du Li came out on top at the qualification rounds in Women's 10m Air Rifle with a new Olympic record, but ended up getting a silver medal. She says the new rules certainly affected her.

"With the new rules, your score in the qualification rounds cannot be added to the final round, and that means the result purely depends on the final round. It increases uNPRedictability and hurts the chances of those who did well in the qualification rounds."

Besides rules, plenty of human factors were at play too. For example, in the Women's epee event, Chinese fencer Sun Yiwen practically lost to the referee.

"The referee already said stop. I stopped, and my opponent was still hitting me. In the end, the referee gave her the point. That was so frustrating. I tried my hardest to adjust myself for the bronze medal match, but it was still so difficult."

And of course, the most jaw-dropping controversy came in courtesy of Australian swimmer Mack Horton. He was competing in men's 400m freestyle against Chinese superstar Sun Yang, who was the defending champion. Without any provocation, not only did Horton call Sun a "drug cheat", he also continued to be disrespectful after winning the event by a thread, saying he simply defeated someone who took drugs.

"I used the word drug cheat because he tested positive. It's not specifically made against Mr. Sun. I just have a problem with athletes who tested positive."

Silver medalist Sun took the high road and refused to humor Horton with a spat.

"We'll just do what we're supposed to do. The Chinese team is clean, period. Every athlete who comes here to compete needs to be respected, and trying to influence your opponent with mind tricks like that is just uncalled for."

But it wasn't all bad news on the first day. In tennis for example, Chinese player Zheng Saisai advanced to the second round of women's singles, defeating the current world number 4, Agnieszka Radwańska from Poland.

"I didn't know that I can play my first round this good. Really happy I can represent my country to play the Olympics. This is my dream. And I can play on the center court, court 1. It's a really amazing experience."

The Olympics will last longer than two weeks, so the first day was just that, the beginning. With a positive attitude and the real talent to back it up, the Chinese team will do just fine.

For CRI, this is Liu Yan reporting from Rio.