On the evening of April 30, Beijing time, the mixed doubles final of the 2023 Asian Badminton Championships was staged in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in this national badminton civil war, the two post-00s partners Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin defeated the ace pair Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong 2-0, winning the high-level event for the second time and winning the Asian Championship for the first time after the Swiss Open in March. This rising young pair has become the third or even the second combination of the mixed doubles of the national badminton. The emergence of Jiang Zhenbang and Wei Yaxin continued Guoyu's advantage in the mixed doubles event.
Jiang Zhenbang, born in 2001, is from Guangxi, and Wei Yaxin is a Hunan girl born in 2000, and this pair is a young duo that Guoyu has recently focused on cultivating. The two won the Malang Badminton Masters at the end of last year, and at the Super 500 Indonesia Masters in January this year, although they could only start from the qualifying round, they beat the No. 5 seeds and South Korean pair Seo Seungjae/Choi Yoo-hyun, the world's No. 18 Japanese pair Kyohei Yamashita/Nanaru Shinoya, the Olympic champion teammates Wang Yilu/Du Yue, and Japan's Misaki Matsutomo/Yuki Kaneko. Although they eventually won the silver medal by losing to teammates Feng Yanzhe / Huang Dongping in the final, they performed impressively enough.
Seeing the potential of the pair, Guoya began to let the two participate in high-level competitions, and their points and rankings continued to rise. At the Swiss Open in late March, the pair defeated Malaysia's Wu Sheng-bun and Lai Jiemin in the final to take home their first high-level tour title. Before that, the two also won the China (Ruichang) International Badminton Masters Championship. Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin won the championship for two consecutive weeks, winning ten consecutive victories. So far, although they have only participated in 9 international competitions, they have entered the top 25 in the world ranking.
In this Asian Championship, the two defeated opponents from various countries in a row, and when teammates Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping lost in the first round and Cheng Xing/Chen Fanghui were also eliminated in the second round, they joined hands with Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong to advance to the final, which won the championship and runner-up of the mixed doubles event for the Chinese team in advance, and brought vitality and hope to the team in the embarrassment that all the other four national badminton players were absent from the final.
In the final, the two played more passionately and without pressure, winning two consecutive games 21-15, 21-16, winning the competition between the two senior brothers and sisters, winning the Asian championship title for the first time, and also winning the 1000 level championship for the first time. At a time when the Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping duo has been in a slump recently, Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin are quietly climbing to the position of the second mixed doubles of Guoyu, and compared with the "Phoenix Duo", the two are younger and have a more promising future.
Text/Beiqing Sports Liu Ailin