Tokyo: Malaysia’s World No. 9 men’s doubles pair Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik ended their 7-match losing streak to World No. 1 Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo of Indonesia in the quarter-finals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Thursday by beating the Indonesian pair 21-14, 21-17.
“I really didn’t expect that we would win, especially in the Olympics, and we never beat them. This is the best match of my career,” said Soh to the BWF website.
“On the court, we kept communicating with each other to strengthen our confidence,” added Soh.
“No one thought this would happen, but we are very satisfied with our performance. We will go to the next round with this fighting spirit; we tried to make them uncomfortable on the court with our offenses,” explained Chia.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian player, Marcus Fernaldi Gideon admitted they didn’t play well on Thursday.
“We felt very bad. I think we were already under pressure starting from the beginning of the match. We have to re-evaluate our performance,” said Gideon.
“They played like they have nothing to lose, they kept attacking us,” added Gideon.
“We were feeling stressed playing in Olympics, which led to poor performance,” explained Gideon.
However, the job is not done yet for Chia/Soh as they will play China’s World No. 6 Li Junhui/Liu Yuchen in the semi-finals. Chia/Soh have a 0-5 head-to-head record against the Chinese pair.
Li/Liu defeated World No. 12 Kim Astrup/Anders Skaarup Rasmussen of Denmark 12-21, 21-14, 21-19 in the quarter-finals.
Below are the matches for men’s doubles semi-finals:
Top Half:
Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik (MAS) vs. Li Junhui/Liu Yuchen (CHN)
Bottom Half:
Lee Yang/Wang Chi-lin (TPE) vs. Mohammad Ahsan/Hendra Setiawan (INA)
In men’s singles last 16 matches, the reigning All England champion, Lee Zii Jia put up a good fight against reigning Olympic champion, Chen Long of China, but the Chinese proved too strong for the Malaysian at the biggest stage of badminton, beating Lee 8-21, 21-19, 21-5.
“I faced some difficulties at the beginning, my opponent is good at counterattacks,” said Chen Long.
“In the second game, I thought that my Olympic Games would be over. I reminded myself to focus on winning one point at a time,” added Chen Long.
“I have been waiting five years for this Olympic, I don’t want to wait any longer. I believed I made some good improvement in this Olympic,” explained Chen Long.
Below are the matches for men’s singles quarter-finals:
Top Half:
Heo Kwang-hee (KOR) vs. Kevin Cordón (GUA)
Viktor Axelsen (DEN) vs. Shi Yuqi (CHN)
Bottom Half:
Anthony Sinisuka Ginting (INA) vs. Anders Antonsen (DEN)
Chen Long (CHN) vs. Chou Tien-chen (TPE)
