Chinese badminton mixed doubles pair Xu Yongkai/Jin Yujia have teamed up. The former will form a cross-border partnership with Indonesian female player Gloria Widjaja and make their debut at the Indonesian Masters (Super 500) to be held next week.
The 32-year-old Gloria is 1.82 meters tall. When she partnered with compatriot Faizal in 2019, she ranked sixth in the world in mixed doubles. Since then, she has partnered with Ferdinansyah (2024) and Kusharjanto (2025). The latter suffered a serious knee injury and has not yet returned.
30-year-old Xu Yongkai once partnered with his wife Chen Weihan, but they broke up at the end of 2024 due to the latter’s injury. Chen Weihan retired in April last year and is currently studying sports management at the University of Bath in the UK. After breaking up with Chen Weihan, Xu Yongkai began to team up with Jin Yujia and won the Bangladesh International Challenge Championship in December 2024, but failed to achieve more breakthroughs since then.
Talking about the cross-border combination of Xu Yongkai and Gloria, my country’s doubles head coach Paulus said: “Gloria was chosen because her style of play and competition are more suitable for Xu Yongkai, and her original partner happened to be unable to compete due to injury… We are not sure how long this cooperation will last, but if it succeeds, it will be a win-win result for both countries.”
The two have no fixed training location and will travel between the Lion City and Indonesia.
The Singapore Badminton Association revealed to Lianhe Zaobao on Monday (January 12) that Gloria has flown to Singapore at her own expense to prepare for the Indonesian Masters with Xu Yongkai. Xu Yongkai will also go to Indonesia for training from time to time in the future. This is to “train with different partners to gain greater training benefits.” This multinational pair will mainly compete in the BWF World Tour and will not participate in the Asian Games in October this year.
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Xu Yongkai said that he and Gloria had joint training last year, and this week is the first formal training as a partner. They are both “very familiar with each other’s playing style” and are confident that they can complement each other, but they do not have specific goals at the moment.
Gloria said: “We have played against each other in competitions before and have also practiced together. I believe in Xu Yongkai and hope that we can form good cooperation in the next competition and achieve ideal results.”
As for Jin Yujia, she will try different partner combinations in women’s doubles and mixed doubles. Next, she will partner with another Chinese player Huang Jinteng in mixed doubles to compete in this week’s National Open Championship.
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