Taiwanese badminton player Chiu Pin-chian yesterday won her first Super 300 title, beating Vietnam’s Nguyen Thuy Linh in straight sets at the Korea Masters in Iksan, South Korea.
Twenty-six-year-old world No. 20 Chiu, who was the top seed at the event, knocked out second seed and world No. 24 Nguyen 21-16, 21-15 in just 39 minutes at the Wonkwang University Cultural and Sports Center.
The victory was not only her first Super 300 title, but the first time she has made it to a final since the Ruiching China Masters Super 100 tournament in March last year.
Photo: Screen grab from Taipower Badminton’s Facebook page
Chiu was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the past two tournaments, the Denmark Open and the Arctic Open, both last month.
She on Saturday rallied to defeat Indonesia’s Ni Kadek Dhinda Amartya Pratiwi 19-21, 21-19, 21-8 to reach her first Super 300 final.
Chiu dropped the first game in her first meeting with Pratiwi. Trailing 15-16 in the second, she won four straight points to take control and force a deciding game, when she pulled away with a nine-point run to seal a 21-8 victory.
Photo: CNA
Following the retirement of former world No. 1 Tai Tzu-ying, Chiu rose to be Taiwan’s highest-ranked female shuttler.
Tai fell from world No. 5 after not playing a tournament since September last year.
She officially announced her retirement on Friday, bringing to a close one of Taiwan’s greatest sports runs, after she topped the women’s singles rankings for a record 214 weeks from December 2016 to September 2022.
Chiu sits just ahead of compatriot Lin Hsiang-ting in the world rankings, while Sung Shuo-yun is ranked 30th.
Chiu is tomorrow to start her Kumamoto Masters Japan campaign, where she is seeded seventh, while Lin is seeded eighth.
In the men’s singles, Taiwanese badminton star Chou Tien-chen is seeded second and Lin Chun-yi is seeded fifth.
In men’s doubles, Lee Jhe-huei and Yang Po-hsuan are seeded fifth, and Chiu Hsiang-chieh and Olympic gold medalist Wang Chi-lin are seeded sixth.
In women’s doubles, Hsieh Pei-shan and Hung En-tzu are seeded fifth.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
RSS