WORLDS 2015 R16 – Fright for Marin, flight for Danes

Carolina Marin survived an injury scare, while Denmark’s Fischer Nielsen/Pedersen succumbed to Susanto, Jordan, and the crowd.

By Don Hearn, Badzine Correspondent live in Jakarta.  Photos: Badmintonphoto (live)

Thursday at the BWF World Badminton Championships started off with a mixed bag for the first Europeans on court.  Carolina Marin rose from a scary ankle incident to win her match against Pai Yu Po of Chinese Taipei.

Shortly thereafter, 5^th-seeded Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen were unable to catch Indonesia’s Praveen Jordan and Debby Susanto (pictured right) in their perilously close third game.

After her match, defending women’s singles World Champion Marin spoke of her fall midway through the first game and the fright it gave her: “I had the same sort of injury last year in Europe at the World Championships.  That’s why I was a little bit scared when I fell down but after that, I tried not to think about my ankle because I would be so scared I wouldn’t be able to play.

“So I tried to keep my focus on what I had to do.  My physiotherapist is here so he’s going to treat me now.

“At the end of the second game, I made some easy mistakes and I was a little bit angry with myself so I gave her some confidence but at the beginning of the third game, I kept calm and thought about my strategy against her.

“I don’t want to think about defending my title.  I just want to take it step by step and now I’ll think about my match against maybe Wang Shixian and about my strategy against her.

“Pai is a tough opponent.  I’d never played her before and all people know that this hall is difficult to play in.  Because of the drift, it’s difficult to control the shuttle.  I can’t say this was my best game but sometimes when you don’t have a good day, you just have to play and it’s important to win in this kind of match.”

The Danes were obviously in very different spirits following their 80-minute marathon, their first ever loss to world #11 Jordan and Susanto.

“It was a tough game and a close one, as we expected from the beginning,” said Christinna Pedersen after the loss.  “We were really close to losing to them last year at the Worlds in Denmark so we know how good they are and we were well prepared.

“We played really well in part of the game but there were so many ups and downs and when it’s like that, it’s difficult to win against top ten pairs and especially against Indonesians in Indonesia.”

The Danes were trailing 14-19 in the deciding game and managed to equalize at 20-all after saving two match points but could not push it over the edge: “We fought all the way and it was almost enough to win,” said Pedersen.  “We were so far behind so it was a stressful third game.  When it’s so close, you can talk about luck but it’s also the pair who’s searching for the luck and when it’s match point, anyone can win.

“Sometimes it’s like this but right now it’s difficult to have this feeling because we were so close.  When you’re a top pair in the world, your target is always to claim the title so of course that’s our dream and our goal just like for all the others but for us, not this time, not this year.”

“We enjoy the spectators if they are with us,” said Joachim Fischer Nielsen.  “Normally when we play in Indonesia they support us a lot.  Of course, today we played against Indonesia and also on Court #4 all the crowd is was hanging almost on the court so if we had won that match it would have been a great feeling.”

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