Thai Badminton: Close Loss to China at Worlds

In the early morning of September 1st, the Chinese tennis player and world rankings Shi Yuqi celebrated a spectacular comeback, defeated Kunlavut Vitidsarn, winning the championship in the men’s singles for the first time.

In a dramatic match that lasted 1 hour and 17 minutes, Shi Kunlavut defeated with 19:21, 21:10 and 21:18. It was another bitter defeat for Kunlavut in the French capital, since he had to be satisfied again with silver and thus repeated the result of the Olympicinal in Paris 2024 in the same place twelve months ago.

Although Kunlavut left most of the time in the first sentence, it caught up with a strong catch -up in the final phase and won with 21:19.

However, Shi Yuqi reacted quickly and won the second set with a result of 21:10, making the game a decisive game.

In the last sentence, the two players fought an exciting point hunt. In the meantime, Shi took the lead with 17:10, but Kunlavut persisted the gap to 19:18.

When Kunlavut finally hit the injury at the crucial point, Shi sealed the victory with 21:18 and collapsed on the square with tears. He said it was “pure relief to have won this game”.

“I played six games at this tournament and every game was extremely difficult. I almost lost many games, but I turned the sheet. So it feels extremely worthy to win the last game,” said Shi.

In the women’s singles, the fifth place defeated Japanese Akane Yamaguchi the Chinese Yufei effortlessly with 21: 9, 21:13 in just 37 minutes and won her third world championship after the titles in 2021 and 2022.