On April 30, the 2022 Asian Badminton Championships entered its penultimate matchday. In the highly anticipated mixed doubles semi-finals, the IELTS and Yellow Ducks duo faced jordan/Merati, the two most important groups of opponents in the Paris Olympic cycle, Anda Watanabe and Higashino Yusa, both of which won and successfully met in the final.
Such results have made fans addicted, and the former double insurance has finally returned. At the same time, their meeting division really punched the face of the national feather coach Zhang Jun, making him understand how whimsical and unrealistic it was to inexplicably split the world's second-largest combination.
At the beginning of the year, Zhang Jun split the strong files of Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong, paired with Zhang Shuxian and Ou Xuanyi respectively, which triggered a big chaos in the mixed doubles group of guoyu. In the first three months of 2022, including the All England Open, all the national feathers were not eligible for the mixed doubles championship, and the combination of Zheng Siwei and Zhang Shuxian was a frequent visitor to the first and second rounds of the Open.
Zhang Jun originally explained the reasons for splitting the IELTS combination, one of which was that Huang Yaqiong was older, and it was no problem to play for another year or two, but what about when it came to the Paris Olympics? But the next situation is that the 28-year-old Huang Yaqiong has to take the same 28-year-old new partner Ou Xuanyi to the open finals frequently, and she has become the main backbone of the new group with her pure control of the net.
In Huang Yaqiong's body, I really can't see the twilight of a veteran. On the contrary, compared with the world's top mixed doubles women, she is at an absolute advantage. If it weren't for Ou Xuanyi's easy tension in the crucial finals and the high turnover rate of the attack, they would have really won the championship in the Open.
However, it is also a good thing that there is no championship, at least for Guoyu's coaching team to see the value of Huang Yaqiong, and Zhang Shuxian and Ou Xuanyi may not be ideal partners at this stage. As a result, the IELTS combination was able to reunite, and if it could defeat the main external strong opponents at the Asian Championships, it was very likely that the combination of yellow ducks would continue to serve as a double insurance for the mixed doubles event of the national feather in a fixed combination.
More importantly, they did. Although Zheng Siwei's backcourt offensive ability has dropped a lot, with the help of Huang Yaqiong's excellent control of the net, they have advanced all the way to the final and completed the meeting with the Yellow Duck Group. In the semi-finals, they faced the Jordan duo, who had won two consecutive games against themselves in the 2019 season, and won the first set 21-8 in just 10 minutes and forced their opponents to retire on injury grounds.
Although the final has not yet started, no matter what the final result is, I believe that the farce of the mixed doubles of the national feather can be declared over. Even if Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong still can't beat Wang Yilu/Huang Dongping, it is undeniable that like the Tokyo Olympic cycle, they and Huang Duck have built a double insurance of national feathers - and this double insurance, isn't it fragrant?
——Pay attention to the small fish and feel the temperature of sports!