Quarterfinals....

In mixed doubles defeat of the two top seed !!!
shen ye and feng chen lost to Muhamad Rizal / Greysai Polli
and Yoo Yeon Seong / Ha Jung Eun lost to Lee Shen Mu / Cheng Shao Chieh

In men's single chen jin just reach semi finals extremely easily 15/1 15/1 yeeeeeees !! he'll meet Hwang Jung Woon from south korea who defeated chinese lu qicheng.
i'm watching the live scores :
gong weijie just won the 1st set 15-7 and lee cheol ho is leading 15:5 7:2 against chen tianyu ...

in women's single 2nd seed lu lan is fighting hard againt koran jang soo young 6:11 11:6 6:4
wang lin manage to beat korean kim mi young in two very hard game 13:11 13:11

 

there's so many surpriise from the chinese armada who everybody thought they were quite invincible in this world junior championship ..
first top seed jiang yanjiao lost against olympics quarter finalist cheng shao shieh 3:11 11:9 11:5.
there was 4 chinese in quarter final and only two manage to reach semi final lu lan and wang lin but they fought very hard to find a place in SF
they won 6:11 11:6 11:9 and 13:11 13:11.
WS SF :
cheng shao shieh (tpe) vs HA jung eun (kor)
WANG lin vs LU lan (chn)

In men's single like the WS they were 4 and only 2 reached semi finals
chen jin NO PROBLEM for him he destroyed thailandese viboonsin sittichai 15:1 15:1, gong weijie passed just a little harder than chen he beat WONG wei feng 15:7 15:3
LU qicheng and chen tianyu lost to HWANG jung woon and LEE cheol ho
MS SF :
CHEN jin vs HWANG jung woon
GONG weijie vs LEE cheol ho

 

China's last MD pair marginally squeezed into the SF winning against their opponents 17-16 in the last set!!

It was looking great until today for the Red Dragon Fleet. In the end tho, still a chance for 2 all-Chinese affairs...

This is actually getting pretty interesting.. it's good to see great progress from Chinese Taipei's junior squad.

 

The matches today were super With Cheng Shao Jie leading the Chinese Taipei juniors! Fifth place of WS in Athens wasn't she? I really hope she goes all the way in WS and XD! Do us Taiwanese proud!

 

Too bad Jiang Yan Jiao lost, she played so elegantly, as always. But have to give full credit to Cheng Shao Chieh. She just finished a marathon XD match and hardly had any rest at all before playing the single.

 

urine test, China vs Indonesia, and a side story.

After Malaysian pair (MD) defeated the Chinese pair, they had to take urine test. I wonder if all of them had to do the same in the quarter final match, including the speedy, hardly made any error Taiwanese girl who made many drops that defeated the Chinese girl. If you had seen how she moved faster than the Chinese girl, you would be amazed by her stamina and speed, considered that a moment ago she just played three games in the double. I say she was in her top form today. The Chinese girl who lost in the mixed double eventually made it up in her WD game.

Chen Jin's opponent was good, but he couldn't reach the shuttlecock that Chen Jin was able to do it. It was like he couldn't do the next step. Although he gave his best, he almost lost every point at the end.

Somehow I had a feeling that China's opponents had timed their moves against them because China's players were so consistent, so may be it turns them into predictable moves? ie, Indonesian pairs were maximizing their smashing against them. I have no doubt that China's game have been videoed and studied.

Indonesia against China (MD) had a few controversies, also in XD too. The XD's game point was decided by the umpire that the Chinese player had touched the net but it didn't seem to be. They were executing excellent moves and then suddenly stopped by the umpire. They protested but the umpire was firm about it. In MD, they had two kids around 14 to be line judges. So, when the boy called a "out" to a shot that was "way in" but bounced away from the court, the Chinese players were in disbelief. Some of the audience even stood up in disbelief too. The worst came when the umpire called it "even", and told them to replay and China lost several points thereafter. Then later, the same boy called it "out" (it was "in") against Indonesia, the umpire said it was in and China lost the point. The Chinese players argued that the boy said "out" but the umpire stuck to his decision. A few questionable calls were made in the XD too. I believe that many Chinese players lost a lot of confidence in the calls so they couldn't play like they wanted to. (Chen Jin was an exception, 15-1, 15-1). The decisions like these really heat up a large, relatively quiet Chinese crowd (about half of the population in Richmond is Chinese, correct me if I am wrong). During the second game, after the crowd noticed the discrepancy, they started to chant support to the Chinese pair. I was neutral but thought that the Chinese was treated unfairly so I joined in their support. One of the Indonesian boys was not happy with the boy line-judge too, now that the crowd was behind the Chinese players. The crowd gave a big boost to the Chinese players and had a psychological impact to the Indonesian players (they are all under 19 year-old, one of the Malaysian pair is 17). The 2nd and 3rd game were very exciting. I would say that people who have heart-problem should not be in their benefits to watch the third game in the MD when the Chinese players climbed from 0-7 deficit to end it at 17-16. The game point was that Chinese had a second serve and then both Indonese players made a rare, problematic short and weak hits. The Chinese player saw an opening at the back and sent it to the back court. The Indonesian boy chased after it but couldn't make it in time. The crowd stood in ovation and the Chinese threw up their racquets and glanced back happily to the crowd (whew, I could feel blood roaring through my heart during the match). The end.

When I was waiting at the bus station, I was seeing a touring bus left the area. I guessed they were the players and I was surprised that they left so fast.

Here is a side story, I have a pair of elder Taiwanese friends (couple) who have a Taiwanese restaurant in the Richmond Public Market (food court). They said four Chinese players (2 tall girls and 2 tall boys) were eating at their place. When asked why they didn't go to other Chinese restaurants and chose their Taiwanese, the Chinese players replied that they watched video introduced about the name of their restaurant (they used to open a restaurant in Taiwan about 20 years ago). So, when they were here, they were looking for them around in the food court (I kid you NOT!). I wonder if I should get their autographs too.

 

*sigh* I should have stayed and watched the China - Indonesia MD match instead of leaving to play badminton myself. What a big miss.

 

Thanks Kwun

Let me introduce Richmond. I lived there for 2-3 years and was very happy living there. It locates in a flat region, and I mean flat in all directions. The city council decides that trees and parks should be an integrated part of the city. I think it was last year that they won the best city to live in the world in their category (the panel separated cities according to their sizes and then determine the best of each category.) This place has many Japanese and Chinese restaurants so I ate out all the times. Most of their customers are Chinese. The city has bike lanes and some usually empty, open roads (less and less now). I used to do rollerblading 4-5 days a week there.

Street racing was bad around here. Some racers died, some racers got their friends killed, and pedestrians (one retired WW2 nurse), and one RCMP officer Jimmy Ng.

The 2010 Winter game's speed skating rink will be built here. It was supposed to be built in SFU, Burnaby, but the Richmond city offerred a better deal to the province so it is now gone from SFU (Simon Fraser University). Personally, I like a speed skating rink in Richmond. We like to ice-skate at the Minoru Ice Rink (They turned one of two rinks into badminton courts for this event).

I haven't set up a website yet so next time I will put a map of the region that shows the location of the competition. The hotel that the players are living is only one big block away from the tournament (about 10 minutes walk). And, it is 10 minutes walk to the Richmond Public Market. Their hotel is a short distance away from the event but I guess it is to their security and health (it is getting cold and start to rain here) that they have to be taken away by a touring bus.

 

Too bad Jiang lost today. In my opinion she is the most skilled player in the tournament. Great natural deception on all her stroke and good accuracy, but she does lack power in her attack. She completely out played Cheng making her off balanced here and there but she wasn't able to put the finishing touch on the rallies.

 

Cheng's determintation and experience won her the game. I saw that she almost could not walk out of the court after the game. Also there are shots apparently she gambled and came out right. Another factor you said it, it was Jiang's finishing touch - or better the lack of the killing touch.

 

Hi Viver,

Are you going to watch the semi-final today?

I've gone through Cheng's profile some time ago. She was the quarter-finalist of WS in Athen and she lost to Gong Ruina in the semi.


KK

 

Talked to Jiang today. She wasn't 100%, still not fully recoverd from the team WS final. Having said that, Cheng had just fininsed her XD before playing the single.