Birmingham: Since early February, several international tournaments have been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak, and that has disrupted World No. 8 Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik’s plan of solidifying their Race To Tokyo – BWF Olympic Qualification rankings.
With the 2020 All England Open Badminton Championships set to be held at Arena Birmingham on March 11-15th as planned, Chia/Soh who were also last year’s All England runners-up will be playing compatriots Goh Sze Fei/Nur Izzuddin Ramzani in the All England opener.
“We are all worried about the coronavirus outbreak, and we must follow safety guidelines strictly in Birmingham, and we must be very careful,” said Chia.
The pair arrived at Birmingham after their two weeks training in Paris.
“We have played against other Malaysian pairs in the first round of other tournaments, and meeting Sze Fei-Izzuddin in All England first round is just unfortunate,” added Chia.
“We hope to repeat last year’s results, but it will not be easy. We don’t want to put too much pressure on ourselves, we will take one game at a time,” explained Chia.
The other Malaysian men’s doubles pair participating in the All England Championship was World No. 17 independent pair Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi where they will face China’s World No. 16 Tan Qiang/He Jiting in the first round.
