World Table Tennis Championships: Hong Kong assured of mixed doubles bronze but eye upgrade against China duo
- Wong Chun-ting and Doo Hoi-kem are guaranteed a medal as they meet top seeds Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha of China in semi-finals
- Wong and Doo aiming to improve on their bronze medals at the 2015 and 2017 World Championships
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Hong Kong’s Wong Chun-ting and Doo Hoi-kem are looking to swap their guaranteed mixed doubles bronze medals for another colour after reaching the semi-finals at the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban.
The duo were set to face top seeds Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha of China in the early hours of Friday (Hong Kong time) for a place in the final.
With no third-place match, they have already at least matched their bronze finishes at the 2015 and 2017 editions of the championships. Should they be forced to settle for that, they will have contributed half of the six mixed doubles world bronzes Hong Kong has collected in total.
Now the task is to see whether they can go a step or two better.
“The players have worked really hard and their performances have been excellent,” Zhang Rui, the Hong Kong women’s team coach said. “I am giving them full marks already.”
Zhang was watching from the sideline during the Hong Kong pair’s quarter-final in place of the city’s absent men’s coach Liu Guodong, who has been forced to write off the entire South Africa trip after being unable to obtain a visa in time.
“Facing a Chinese pair, we can just be prepared and try our best to play to our standard, and hope for a breakthrough,” Zhang said.
The Hongkongers – who have dropped two places to No 8 in the world rankings since last Friday’s draw – had been handed what their coaches considered to be an encouraging route to the last four, and so it proved as they progressed safely through the rounds.
They beat opponents from Italy, Hungary and the United States to set up a quarter-final clash with Truls Moregard and Christina Kallberg of Sweden, who had ousted world No 6 pair Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manika Batra of India in the last 16.
Wong and Doo were in complete command as they sealed the victory in straight games, winning 11-4, 11-8, 11-7 in 24 minutes.
“The Swedish pair are rather special, but our preparation and analysis were really good,” Zhang said. “Tactically we did well, so we were able to play to our standard and assert control throughout.”
The mixed doubles is Hong Kong’s final remaining interest in the championships, after 29-year-old Wong bowed out in the round of 32 in the men’s singles, at the hands of world No 1 Fan Zhendong of China.
Hong Kong’s rank outsider Lam Siu-hang, who had produced a stunning upset by defeating former runner-up Mattias Falck of Sweden in the opening round, was unable to make it any further.
Lam, the world No 135, lost 4-3 in a nail-biting clash with Taiwo Mati of Nigeria in the second round on Tuesday.
Zhu Chengzhu was the city’s best performer in the women’s singles, losing 4-2 to China’s Chen Xingtong in the last 32 on Wednesday. Doo had failed to make it past Romania’s Adina Diaconu in the round of 64.
No other Hong Kong doubles pair made it past the round of 16. Doo and Zhu fell to China’s Sun and Wang Manyu, while Lee Ho-ching and Ng Wing-lam lost to Barbora Balazova and Hana Matelova, a Slovak Republic and Czechia pair.
In the men’s doubles, Wong and Ho Kwan-kit lost 3-2 to German duo Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Patrick Franziska in the second round.
