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Saturday, September 23
China wins men's singles, women's doubles titles
Reuters
SYDNEY, Australia -- China's badminton squad
triumphed again at the Olympics on Saturday, winning gold in
the men's singles and women's doubles to stamp a new domination
on the sport with a total of four out of the five titles.
Giant-killer Ji Xinpeng, seeded seventh coming into Sydney,
beat Indonesia's number two seed Hendrawan 15-4 15-13, having
already left top seed Taufik Hidayat of Indonesia and world
number one Denmark's Peter Gade in his wake.
Even China's media declared him a "dark horse" and had to
ask him for details about his life at the post-match press
conference.
China's world champion women's doubles team, Ge Fei and Gu
Jun, made it back-to-back gold, successfully defending the
title they won in Atlanta in 1996 over compatriots and second
seeds Huang Nanyan and Yang Wei.
Gao Ling and Qin Yiyuan earlier made it a clean sweep for
China, taking the bronze medal in a play-off against South
Korea's Chung Jae-hee and Ra Kyung-min. It was the first time a
country had taken gold, silver and bronze in an Olympic
badminton event.
"We've created a record in Olympic history," declared head
coach Li Yongbo, a former doubles world champion.
"Overall we are much better than we were four years ago."
"We are grooming new players all the time but at the same
time we keep the old players' standards very high," he said.
China won four medals -- only one gold -- at Atlanta, but
it scooped eight in Sydney - four gold, one silver, and three
bronze.
Ge and Gu have been almost unbeaten since Atlanta but there
is speculation Gu could soon retire now that she has defended
her title.
"It's been reported by the media that we are almost
invincible," Gu said.
"The problem is that the higher you stand, the more you are
afraid of falling down. To keep our glory costs us a lot. The
last four years have been very hard for us," she said.
The pressure of the Olympics also was apparent on Hendrawan,
who choked back tears as he congratulated Ji, but the jubilant
champion had no concerns about his rapid rise to gold.
"In the beginning I did not think about the people I was
playing, I just played one game at a time," he said.
"My motivation was very simple, I just wanted to win."
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