THOMAS CUP 2014 Day 3 – A double French first

Following their victory over Chinese Taipei, France overturned Russia to march into the Thomas Cup quarter-finals for the first time ever.  Team China emerged as the top of their group as they bagged their third victory in the round-robins by silencing Chinese Taipei 5-0.

By Ooi Ee Lyn, Badzine Correspondent. Photos: Badmintonphoto (live)

It may be France’s first time participating in the Thomas Cup finals, but they’ve cleared their way through the group stage to make it straight into the knock-out stage.

Chinese Taipei would have progressed to the quarter-finals if Russia – quarter-finalist two years ago – had defeated the French, but France didn’t give in to the Russians as they pushed them over, winning the tie 3-2.

Despite Brice Leverdez’s loss in the first singles, his doubles partner Lucas Corvée (pictured left) scored the team’s first point in the second singles by beating Vladimir Malkov in straight games.

With the first doubles set to play last, second doubles Baptiste Careme/Bastian Kersaudy went on to flip the tables against Russia’s Anatoliy Yartsev / Rodion Kargaev to claim the second point for the French team.

The French team was already celebrating the historical moment of planting their flag in the quarter-final of the Thomas Cup following Thomas Rouxel’s (pictured right) easy victory over Anton Ivanov, such that Vladimir Ivanov/Ivan Sozonov’s (pictured right) defeat of Brice Leverdez/Lucas Corvee in the end made little difference.

Although the round-robins are still not over yet for most teams, the remaining spots in the quarter-finals are all spoken for but Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Denmark and Japan, having each won two of three ties by now, have already secured their chance to advance into the knock-out stage and merely need to determine who will top Groups A, B, and C.

China fielded their strongest line-up for their tie against Chinese Taipei despite already holding a quarter-final ticket in hand, as Lin Dan (pictured left), showing up late at night, might have faced trouble against Lin Yu Hsien.

However the defending champions kept their record of not dropping a single match in the group stage, defeating Chinese Taipei 5-0 to enter the quarter-final round as the top seeds in their group.

The top two teams of the remaining three groups will face each other in the group stage on Wednesday to decide on who will step into the knock-out stage seeded higher – and who will then have the benefit of not meeting China before the semi-finals.

All of Tuesday’s results can be found here.