The Olympic Badminton Mixed Doubles tournament is over. Indonesia take home gold, Malaysia earn silver, and China get the bronze.
Day 7 of Olympic Badminton saw the completion of one of its five medal events. In the Mixed Doubles finals, Indonesia’s Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir knocked off Malaysia’s Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying to win Olympic gold.
Ahmad and Natsir defeated Chan and Goh 2-0 in the Mixed Doubles Gold Medal Match. It wasn’t a particularly close final, as the Indonesians won the first set over the Malaysians 21-14 and the second set 21-12.
Rounding out the medal winners in Mixed Doubles for 2016 Olympic badminton were the Chinese pair of Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei, who defeated fellow countrymen Xu Chen and Ma Jin on Tuesday night, 2-0, for the bronze medal at Riocentro.
Wednesday morning also saw some action in the Men’s Singles during the quarterfinals stage of the tournament. Advancing to the Men’s Singles Semifinals were Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei, China’s Lin Dan, China’s Chen Long and Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen.
Lee and Lin will square off in the Men’s Singles Semifinals on Friday morning. These two men were considered to be on a collision course to meet in the Men’s Singles Finals. However, Lin’s inability to get the No. 2 seed over countrymen Chen has the two badminton rivals meeting a round earlier than expected.
The other Men’s Singles Semifinals match coming on Friday morning at Riocentro will be between the underdog Axelsen of Denmark versus the No. 2 seed in China’s Chen.
All four Men’s Singles semifinalists have been impressive thus far and clearly have what it takes to bring an Olympic medal home from Rio. China is the only nation certain of taking home a medal in the Men’s Singles in Olympic badminton, as two of the four semifinalists are Chinese.