Orleans: Malaysian mixed doubles pair Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying who won the Polish Open last week, and were hoping for a back-to-back titles in the 2015 Orleans International Challenge had fallen short on Sunday when they suffered a hard-fought loss to Mathias Christiansen/Lena Grebak of Denmark in the final.
Playing in their third international tournament together in nearly a year after Goh Liu Ying spent some time on the sidelines with a knee injury, Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying were firing on all cylinders in completing a 21-11 win in the first set. However, the Denmark pair refused to crack while roaring back to claim the second set 21-17 and forced a decider.
After Chan/Goh levelled the score at 4-4 in the decider, a series of poor errors from the Malaysian pair allowed Mathias Christiansen/Lena Grebak to break in the third set and did not look back, as the Denmark pair eventually triumphing 21-19 in a gripping encounter on Sunday.
Chan/Goh who used to be world no. 3, but are now ranked 117th in the world. The pair is facing a tough test to qualify in 2016 Rio Olympics. Nevertheless, everything is possible, hope they could qualify for Rio Olympics by reaching world’s top 16 when the Olympics qualifying period ends on May 1, 2016.
Other final results of the Orleans International 2015:
Women’s Doubles:
Gabriela Stoeva/Stefani Stoeva (Bulgaria) bt Heather Olver/Lauren Smith (England) 22-20,16-21,21-9
Men’s Singles:
Dmytro Zavadsky (Ukraine) bt Andre Kurniawan Tedjono (Indonesia) 24-22, 21-17
Women’s Singles:
Natalia Koch Rohde (Denmark) bt Soraya De Visch Eijbergen (Netherlands) 21-15, 11-7 Retired
Men’s Doubles:
Matthew Nottingham/Harley Towler (England) bt Adam Cwalina/Przemyslaw Wacha (Poland) 21-12 21-18
