Ratchanok takes Asian gold

Ratchanok takes Asian gold

Patama withdraws BAC presidency bid

Ratchanok Intanon poses with her gold medal. reuters
Ratchanok Intanon poses with her gold medal. reuters

Ratchanok Intanon beat her old nemesis Li Xuerui to win the women's singles title at the Badminton Asian Championships in Wuhan, China yesterday.

The former world champion battled back to beat the Olympic holder 20-22, 23-21, 21-12 in one hour and 16 minutes to become the first Thai player to take home the women's singles honours and put an end to a title drought that lasted almost two years.

It was another disappointing defeat for Chinese top seed Li who also lost to Ratchanok in front of her home crowd when the two met in the final of the 2013 World Championships in Guangzhou.

World No.7 Ratchanok went into the match with a much inferior head-to-head record of 2-7 with the Guangzhou decider the last time she beat the Chinese star and won a title.

However Ratchanok showed incredible resilience and composure beyond her years as the 20-year-old clawed her way back from a set down to stun Li at the packed Wuhan Sports Centre.

Li had a chance to close out the match at 20-19 in the second set but Ratchanok played an incredible point to make it 20-all and went on to win the set 23-21.

It was all Ratchanok in the third set while Li, who admitted she felt tired in the deciding set, committed a string of uncharacteristic unforced errors.

With the win, Ratchanok will move up to No.6 when the new world rankings is released this week. It was Ratchanok's second SuperSeries title and she took home US$15,000 while Li received $7,600.

In the men's singles, second seed Lin Dan of China defeated compatriot Tian Houwei 21-19, 21-18.

Meanwhile, Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul has withdrawn her bid for the presidency of the Badminton Asian Confederation.

Badminton Association of Thailand president Khunying Patama had earlier vowed to run for the seat at the Asia's badminton-governing body in Wuhan, China. However, she decided to withdraw during yesterday's election.

"For the unity of BAC and for the new office bearers to work in harmony, I felt that my withdrawal from bidding for the presidency of the BAC was necessary," said Khunying Patama in a statement.

"Therefore, I made a personal sacrifice to withdraw my candidacy for the presidency so that there would be a president appointed with a consensus and no election."

Khunying Patama also won the election for the title of the BAC's vice president, but she later resigned for the sake of unity in the BAC.

The Indonesia Badminton Association' s secretary general Anton Aditya Subowo was unchallengedly elected the president of BAC while South Korea's Kim Hong-Ki will be the new general secretary.

Subowo will replace Malaysia's Mohd Nadzmi Bin Mohd Salleh.

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT