We thought it would be of interest to readers to provide some updates on how some of our Asian Aussies are doing in sports like badminton and table tennis at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The reason for discussing these 2 sports is that the teams are pretty much almost all Asian Aussies.
According to Yahoo Sport, the Aussie women’s doubles team of Gronya Sommerville and Setyana Mapasa will not be able to compete in the finals for women’s doubles badminton. In saying that, they did compete with some very high ranking teams and have improved in terms of performance. They lost to China’s Du Yue and Li Yin Hui 21-9 21-12, and missed the opportunity to reach the quarter finals. Our Asian Aussie gals are ranked #23 in the world and couldn’t beat the China duo who are ranked #6. However, they did score 21 points in this match which was an improvement from their first match where they only scored 15 points. Somerville and Mapasa close their campaign against Danish world No.15 pairing of Maiken Fruergaard and Sara Thygesen.
And on Monday, Somerville and Simon Leung finished their mixed doubles campaign, going down to Denmark’s Mathias Christiansen and Alexandra Boje 21-6 21-14.
Now to table tennis – and let’s get to the news about Jian Fang Lay, who made the news headlines as being one of the only Australian women to compete in 6 Olympics. Lay recently beat Poland’s Qian Li 4 – 2, but lost to German Han Ying 11-9 11-9 11-7 11-8 on Tuesday (via Blue Mountains Gazette). This though is the best performance for Lay in her career, and that is an achievement of its own. Lay now plays in the women’s teams event, with Australia’s first match on Sunday against Germany. Wishing her all the best!
Images via the Olympics site
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