Beijing Olympic Games

Updated: 2007-10-08

Wang Yihan and Li Yu prevented the usual European clean sweep in Germany for the classy Bitburger Open. The young Chinese defeated local hopes while Denmark’s Boe and Mogensen made an impressive comeback.

Tough luck for Prezmyslaw Wacha. The top seed of the Bitburger Open from Poland had a first round clash with the future winner of the event, Yu Li, a Chinese shuttler who had yet to shine outside his own border.

In the Bitburger Open, Yu avenged this lack of fame by defeating a bunch of famous players from the old continent en route to his first title. He beat no less than Denmark’s new kid on the block, Joachim Persson and German’s giant Bjoern Joppien.

But in the final, Yu faced another Asian, who was hoping to get important points from this event played far away from home – Lee Tsuen Seng, from KLRC, who knew his compatriot’s good run in Macau meant more trouble for him to get the second ticket for Malaysia in the race for an Olympic berth.

But in spite of a much better world ranking, the Malaysian bowed to the young Chinese, 21/23, 21/19,15/21 after a fierce battle. The Malaysian may have paid the price for his marathon semi-final against German’s former number one, Marc Zwiebler, who was out of the courts for more than a year due to a sustaining back injury.

In the women’s single event, Wang Yihan – a little more known Chinese youngster – also fought her way through to the final of the event, helped in the matter by her compatriot, Zhu Jingjing, who upset top seed Xu Huaiwen from Germany earlier in the draw.

The two Chinese then met in an impressive semi-final – finally won by Wang, while Jiang Yanjiao, favourite in the other half of the draw, was beaten by the local girl Juliane Schenk in three tough games. And the final between the upcoming European and the young Chinese went to Wang Yihan in spite of losing the first game. The Chinese kept her composure and took the two remaining ones 21/10 – 21/17 for her first title outside China’s borders.

If Zwiebler’s comeback was one of the nice surprises in the men’s single’s draw, the pairing of Mattias Boe and Carsten Mogensen ended up in an even better way : the Danish duo, who had to split up for over a year because of Mogensen’s long time injury and operation – came back in Germany as winners, beating England’s scratch pairing of Lindley and Blair in the final, 21/17 – 21/15.

No trouble for top seeds from China Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen who had to make up for their separation to try to get some points to be able to fight for keeping their Olympic title. Zhang and Yang clearly outclassed all their opponents – only Rayappan and Wallwork managed to give some resistance.

Zhang and Yang spent less than half an hour to beat Munt and Nicholas 21/10 – 21/11. Kristof Hopp and Bigit Overzier kept the local hopes alive when they won the mixed double event, Defeating the England-Scotland partnership of Robert Blair-Imogene Bankier, 21/17 – 21/17.

Few hundred miles another badminton event was taking place in Bulgaria – the third in the same week end. Petya Nedelcheva has obviously healed from her knee injury sustained last month and won her home event against Anna Rice in straight games, while Nina Vislova won two gold medals in the mixed and women’s doubles.

The men’s singles crown went to Jan Frohlich of the Czech Republich, who didn’t have to play the whole final as his opponent Kevin Gordon got injured midway. Same fate for France’s new pairing of Stoyanov and Kehlhoffner who had to concede a walkover in the final against Poland’s Mateusiak and Logosz.

(Credit: BWF. Click here for further information.)