BEHIND the success of the men were the women.
Men’s doubles badminton pair Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik gave themselves another shot at Olympic glory by upstaging bogeymen Indians Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty in a nail-biting quarter-finals, and then paid credit to the women’s doubles pair of Pearly Tan and M. Thinaah.
They said they were motivated by Pearly-Thinaah’s passage into the semi-finals in an earlier match.
“We are quite happy for them and actually, we were motivated and excited after seeing them reach the semi-finals,” said Wooi Yik.
“Watching their (Pearly-Thinaah’s) performance, Aaron and I decided we should never give up and keep moving forward.”
It had at first looked like the Indian bogey was about to strike again as Aaron-Wooi Yik got off to a shoddy start and fell 13-21 in the first game but they mounted a superb finish to win the next two game 21-14, 21-16 and wrap up the victory in 59 minutes at the Adidas Arena in Port dela Chapelle yesterday.
World No 3 Aaron-Wooi Yik, the bronze medallists at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, used their experience to bounce back strongly to end a run of three consecutive defeats by the Indian pair. The victory also and stretched their head-to-head record to 9-3.
There is no time to celebrate though. Another big hurdle awaits as Aaron-Wooi Yik will play world No. 1 Liang Weikeng-Wang Chang in the semi-finals.
The Chinese fought hard to beat Indonesians Fajar Alfian-Rian Ardianto 24-22, 22-20 in another quarter-final but Aaron was unperturbed by that challenge.
“We lost to the Indians in the last few meetings and we had hoped to cross the hurdle. We did it and we really celebrated that victory on court,” said Aaron.
“Against Weikeng-Wang Chang, there will be no pressure and we have to play our own game. The win will come.”
“Satwiksairaj-Chirag are tall players and as usual, had a lot of advantage while receiving (service) and forced us to make many mistakes.
“But we waited for our chances in the third game. At 14-16 in the third game, we started creating our chances to attack.”
