[Asian Games] Badminton Choi Sol-gyu-Kim Won-ho, Men's Doubles Silver Medal

Defeat to the India Team

Badminton players Choi Sol-gyu (28, Yonex) and Kim Won-ho (24, Samsung Life) won the silver medal at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.

On the 7th, Choi Sol-gyu and Kim Won-ho lost 0-2 (18-21, 16-21) to the world No. 3 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty (India) in the men's doubles final held at Binjiang Gymnasium in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. This is the first Asian Games medal for Korean men's doubles badminton in nine years since Yoo Yeon-seong and Lee Yong-dae finished as runners-up at the 2014 Incheon Games.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Korean team took an early lead by scoring four consecutive points from 2-3 in the first set. At 13-13, Kim Won-ho accurately predicted the opponent's attack course and rushed forward to score a push point.

Later, at 17-15, when the Korean team widened the score gap, they seemed to gain momentum by breaking through the opponent's defense with consecutive smashes, but they conceded two consecutive points due to two in-out judgment errors. At 18-17, Kim Won-ho fought desperately, continuing the rally while sitting on the court, but the opponents caught up to tie the score.

Ultimately, the Indian team’s powerful smashes from their tall stature overwhelmed the Korean team, who could not score any more points and lost 18-21. The Korean team’s momentum was broken, and they fell behind 7-11 in the second set.

During the interval, Choi Sol-gyu and Kim Won-ho reorganized their formation and scored three consecutive points to narrow the match to a one-point difference. However, at 12-14, when they were chasing by one or two points, they conceded three consecutive points. Although they added two points in a row to reduce the deficit to 14-17, Kim Won-ho and Choi Sol-gyu’s strokes faltered one after another, resulting in consecutive errors that gave away two points, and the match ended as it was.

With this, Korean badminton, which had won one gold medal (women’s team) and three bronze medals (men’s team, mixed doubles, women’s doubles) at this tournament, added one silver medal.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.