Tokyo: The Tokyo Olympic women’s singles No. 1 seed Chen Yufei of China and No. 2 seed Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan have taken us on an emotional roller coaster ride in a pulsating gold medal match which took place at the Musashino Forest Sports Plaza on Sunday.
Tai got off to a quick start in the first game by leading 4-1, but Chen managed to level the score at 7-7 before Tai adjusted her attacks to score 4 points in a row to enter the interval with 11-10.
After the interval, Chen battled Tai to a stalemate with the score went from 13-13 to 17-17. After 17-17, Chen regained the lead and took the victory in the first game 21-18.
Tai refused to let Chen took home the gold medal in an easy fashion by coming back from 6-10 down, leveling the score at 14-14, and shrugged off an inspired second set run by Chen with a brilliant net shot on Chen’s right side, forcing the Chinese player to return the shuttlecock out of bound and wrapped up the second game 21-19.
The second-seeded Tai however had dug herself into a very deep hole in the decider through several uncharacteristic self-made mistakes, trailing by 3-10 before slowly crawling out those holes only to find out it’s a bit more complicated with Chen Yufei playing remarkable strong defenses.
Tai managed to narrow the score difference to 14-15, but Chen held her nerves to win the game 21-18 after Tai’s net shot found the net, allowing Chen to clinch China’s second gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics badminton event.
In the women’s singles bronze medal playoff which took place before the final, the Rio silver medalist PV Sindhu of India defeated He Bingjiao of China 21-13, 21-15 in 53 minutes.
It would be interesting to see if World No. 3 Chen Qing Chen/Jia Yi Fan of China would continue China’s quest for the Olympic badminton gold medal when they face Greysia Polii/Apriyani Rahayu of Indonesia in the women’s doubles final on Monday.
