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Tobias Rieder, Moritz Müller and Marcel Noebels celebrate a goal
Photo: Laci Perenyi / imago images/Laci Perenyi
After the clear opening defeat against Canada, the German national ice hockey team celebrated their first victory at the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
The selection of national coach Toni Söderholm defeated hosts China, who were considered outsiders, 3-2 (2-0, 1-1, 0-1) on Saturday.
In the final game of the preliminary round on Sunday, Germany meets the USA, who are still undefeated after two games and beat Canada 4-2 in the prestige North American duel.
The German lead by Daniel Pietta (10th minute) was denied after video evidence.
But then Marcel Brandt (14th), Korbinian Holzer (17th) and Dominik Kahun (25th) made up for it with their goals.
Parker Foo (40th) scored the first goal in Olympic history for China, Taylor Wong (49th) even reduced the goal to one goal when he was outnumbered.
Germany's chances of winning the group are only theoretical after the disappointing 1:5 at the start, the team is currently in third place.
The three group winners and the best runner-up qualify directly for the quarter-finals, with the remaining four places being decided in knockout games on Wednesday.
In this way, the German team had already reached the quarter-finals four years ago when they won the silver medal in Pyeongchang, when a 2-1 after extra time against Switzerland was enough to make it into the last eight.
Club team mimics the Chinese national team
China had lost its first group game 0:8 against the USA.
Instead of a classic national team, the host team will be represented by the Kunlun Red Star club team.
Kunlun plays in the Russian-influenced East European league KHL and takes last place there.
There are only nine native Chinese in the team, 16 North Americans from Canada and the USA and one Russian were naturalized for the Olympics and provided with Chinese names.
cev/dpa
