OLYMPICS Day 4 – Danes defy odds

Denmark’s Pedersen/Rytter Juhl booked themselves at least one quarter-final spot each at the Olympic Games as they powered past second seeds Tian/Zhao of China.

By Don Hearn, Badzine Correspondent.  Photos: Badmintonphoto (archives)

Christinna Pedersen / Kamilla Rytter Juhl (pictured) may be one of only three pairs at these Olympics to have beaten world #2 Tian Qing / Zhao Yunlei but they’ve also suffered three losses since that might have shaken their belief in their ability to prevail.

Their performance on Tuesday morning at Wembley Arena proved otherwise, however.  After edging the All England champions 22-20 in the first game, they dominated the second game, taking it 21-12, and with it grabbed the lead spot in Group D.

The win not only put them atop the group, but also, in relegating Tian/Zhao to the #2 spot, it made the expected all-Chinese women’s doubles final an impossibility.  Similarly, the win by compatriots Boe/Mogensen over Chai/Guo means that only one Chinese men’s doubles pair will survive the quarters, unless, of course, Cai/Fu happen to lose their last group match.

Both Danish women also stand to keep their campaigns alive in mixed doubles.  Rytter Juhl began the day already assured of a place in the knockout round while Pedersen’s fate depends on the result of her own match and possibly on that of Poland’s Mateusiak/Zieba.

Cheng Wen Hsing is another who is still looking to advance in both disciplines.  Her hopes in women’s doubles were realized when she and long-time partner Chien Yu Chin (pictured right) fought past Japan’s Fujii/Kakiiwa in two straight to top their group.  This will put Cheng in a quarter-final showdown with Zhao Yunlei in a contest that will limit one of them to no more than a single medal.

Upsets, round robin and their consequences

The two turnarounds certainly added some excitement to the fourth day of competition in London 2012 but they also added to a problem created by the new competition format.

Day 4 now features a total of 6 matches with no bearing on quarter-final entry, while an additional six matches are between two pairs who have already clinched spots in the quarter-finals and are merely playing to decide which side of the knockout draw they’ll be in.

In any previous Olympics, four days of doubles matches could have already brought us to a final.

That’s to say nothing of the many one-sided contests, particularly in singles.  Still, four days into the tournament that players have been counting on for the past four years, there were five matches that ended by mid-day with the losing player held to 11 points or fewer per game.

The conclusion of the singles group play did yield some interesting matches.  If the only upset by the end of the afternoon session was by Parupalli Kashyap (pictured) of India over Vietnam’s Nguyen Tien Minh, there was also the fact that Tine Baun, Pi Hongyan, and Sayaka Sato were made to go the distance against European players ranked far below them.

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