BIRMINGHAM: Tine Baun became the oldest All-England women’s singles winner of the open era when she beat the youngest finalist Ratchanok Intanon in a uniquely emotional final.
The 33-year-old’s 21-14, 16-21, 21-10 win over the 18-year-old yesterday brought to an end the career of one of the outstanding players of the past ten years, and the only woman to threaten Chinese dominance. The Dane only decided to compete this year as a “last adventure” but instead, as seventh seed, surprised herself by winning the All-England title back and taking it a third time.
Her young Thai opponent, the youngest world junior champion at the age of 14, was not far from spoiling the script with her wonderful movement and wide range of strokes and looked a likely future champion.
Earlier, Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, one of the women’s doubles pairs disqualified from the Olympics in London for throwing matches, took another step down the road toward atonement by regaining the title at the prestigious All-England Open championships yesterday.
The top-seeded Chinese pair followed their Super Series success at the Korean Open in January with a 21-18, 21-10 win over their compatriots, Zhao Yunlei and Cheng Shu.
Yu, who announced that she was quitting badminton after the Games scandal but changed her mind, thus produced further confirmation that her career is moving into another, more productive phase.
Earlier Zhao and Cheng, a new partnership, had had to fight their way through the qualification and an unseeded position in the draw.
They upset the seedings twice to do that, but in the final against Yu and Wang there was only one phase where it seemed they might pull off the miracle and go all the way.
That was when they pulled back a four-point deficit to reach 16-16, with a chance of continuing the momentum to upset their top-seeded team mates.
But Wang delivered a good smash return of serve to halt a four-point sequence and then won two more points behind her serve to avert the immediate danger. Once the top seeds had taken the first game, the match became much more one-sided.
The result meant that Zhao, the only player to win two badminton gold medals at the same Olympics, was denied the chance of doing the same at this year’s All-England.
China thus won the women’s doubles event for the 13th time in 14 years, and later showed that they are developing another remarkable pair by winning the men’s doubles title back.
That was achieved by Liu Xiaolong and Qiu Zihan, a new partnership who were unseeded and who completed an unexpected journey by beating seeded opponents for the third time.
These were Hiroyuki Endo and Kenichi Hasagawa of Japan, who made a full contribution to a magnificent spectacle, full of high speed rallies, but rarely looked like altering the course of the Chinese newcomers’ triumph in a 21-11, 21-9 result.
