Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao on Saturday continued his fairytale run at the All England Open, dispatching France’s Alex Lanier to set up a final against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi of China after press time last night.
Lee, staged a comeback after losing the first game to overcome in-form Lanier, the last remaining European in the competition, 19-21 21-14 21-17, as the Taiwanese shuttler advanced to his first BWF World Tour Super 1000 final.
“The victory hasn’t sunk in yet. I didn’t expect that I would do this well,” the world No. 22 said. “I’m so surprised by the result myself.”
Photo: AP
“I was really into the game and didn’t want to think about winning or losing — I only wanted to enjoy the experience,” the BWF Web site quoted Lee as saying.
Lanier, aiming to be the first Frenchman to make it to an All England final, had been the favorite going into the semi-final.
“He [Lee] has a specific game style, he’s really technical,” Lanier said, according to the BWF Web site. “It’s quite unique, actually. The speed he puts on the shot and all the deception. I wasn’t good with the legs, I was fatigued. So it was worse to have all this deception against me. The intensity he puts with the shots, that was the problem today.”
In June last year, Lee defeated Malaysia’s Cheam June Wei to win the Kaohusing Masters, a BWF Tour Super 100 event, and in August finished as runner-up in the Korea Open, a Super 500 tournament.
The 25-year-old is the remaining Taiwanese in the All England Open, after the Taiwanese men’s doubles pairing of Lee Jhe-huei and Yang Po-hsuan were ousted on Friday in the quarter-finals, along with compatriots Liu Kang-heng and Yang Po-han.
The nation’s top shuttler, world No. 9 Chou Tien-chen, was knocked out by Shi in the round-of-16.
Twenty-five-year-old Lee was after press time last night to face top seed Shi, who edged a thrilling semi-final against Chinese compatriot Li Shifeng 21-9, 20-22, 21-19 to reach a fourth All England Open final.
The world No. 1 was pushed all the way by Li, who recovered from a dominant opening game from Shi to threaten an upset. The final game was a nerve-racking affair, with Shi looking set to break away. However, Li fought back strongly, leveling the score twice near the end, before Shi kept his cool and clinched the win.
Shi’s only previous All England success came back in 2018, but he is a big favorite to land a second title against Lee.
“We both made some mistakes, so it was about the finer points today,” Shi said of his Li match. “We needed a lot of patience. It wasn’t about tactics, just about avoiding mistakes.”
The first semi-final of the women’s singles provided another all-China clash, with second seed Wang Zhiyi beating Han Yue 21-10 21-19.
Top seed An An Se-young of South Korea proved too strong for two-time world champion Akane Yamaguchi of Japan in a rematch of the 2022 final, where Yamaguchi emerged victorious.
This time, world No. 1 An, the reigning Olympic champion, had little difficulty securing a 21-12 21-17 win to book her third final in four years. She also maintained her record of dropping just one game all week.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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