13th WUC Badminton – Final Day

CORDOBA – The competitors for the last 15 matches planned – semi-finals and finals – of the 13^th WUC Badminton, were all Asian players. The first matches of the day saw Iskandar (MAS – N°5) and Huan Gao (CHN – N°2) qualify for the men’s singles final defeating respectively Jen-Hao Hsu (TPE – N°1) and Arif (MAS). Shortly later in the mixed doubles, Tang/Liu (CHN – N°8) eliminated Malaysia’s Vountus/Meng (MAS) to qualify for the final where they would meet their teammates Zhang/Ou who defeated the seed N°2, Malaysia’s Lufti/Fei Cho Soong. The women’s singles tournament was the only one having a logical final with both the seed N°1, China’s Xin Liu (world N°20) eliminating it’s teammate Xiaojia Chen (CHN) and seed n°2 Yu-Po Pai beating Shiomda (JPN) in their respective semi-finals. In the women’s doubles, Shinoda/Uratani (JPN) obtained their spot in the final after defeating Kim/Kang (KOR) to face seed n°2 China’s Ou/Tang who defeated Taipei’s Wu/Hsieh in two easy sets 21/8; 21/13. Finally in the men’s doubles China’s Guo/Zhang defeated Hsu/Lin (TPE) while Arif/Iskandar (MAS) overcame the loss of the first game to finally defeat another pair from Chinese Taipei Tseng/Wang and qualify for the final.

In the afternoon, the programme of the five finals started with the women’s doubles and the impressive victory of China’s Ou/Tang (N°2) over Shinoda/Uratani (JPN) in thirty minutes and two sets 21/13; 21/8. The men’s singles final offered much more suspense. Huan Gao (N°2 – CHN) took the first set 21/15 and the public was expecting a fast ending when Iskandar (N°5 – MAS), surprisingly as in every one of his matches, came back to take the second set 21/15 but ended up losing in what appeared to be the set of the tournament 22-20 after having lead 9-16. It was the second gold medal of China on what started to look like a grand slam afternoon for China. The following match continued this impression with two Chinese pairs facing each other. Ou/Zhang lost to their fellow team members Liu/Tang (N°8) in two quick sets and less than 15 minutes 21/12 and 21/11. In the next match, Yu-Po Pay (N°2 – TPE) took a good start in the women’s singles final winning the first game 21/19 against Liu (CHN –N°1 – world N°20). In the second game, the Chinese came back on track with a game easily won 21/12, all would then be decided in the last set. The last set was an epic one, very tense and saw a surprise, the world N°20 player lose to the n°37, Yu-Po Pai taking the title 21/16 in the last game. To conclude, the men’s doubles final saw another surprise, not only Iskandar and Arif (MAS) did a great tournament in singles, not only were they not specialist of doubles, but the two top 100 players (respectively 94 and 57) managed to take the best over the Chinese pair Guo/Zhang in two sets, bringing the title to Malaysia, 21/16 and 21/19.

This concluded this 13^th WUC Badminton 2014 with a great sport show. The medals were awarded by Alison Odell, FISU First Assessor; Lawrence Chew, BWF Council member; Roger Johansson, FISU Badminton Technical Delegate and Roland Joachim, FISU CIC member. The delegations finally took part in the closing ceremony of the event where Alison Odell declared the event closed and passed the FISU Flag on to the next organisers, the Russian Student Sport Union which will bring the 14^th edition to the city of Ramenskoe in the suburbs of Moscow in 2016.

(Source: Julien Buhajezuk, Exec. Asst. WUC)