London Olympics: Zhang Nan, Zhao Yunlei overpower Xu Chen, Ma Jin to claim Mixed Doubles gold medal
China won its first gold medal in the badminton event of London Olympics when its Mixed Doubles campaigners Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei toppled Xu Chen-Ma Jin in the final match on August 3, 2012.
The Wembley Arena seems happy hunting ground for victorious duo as they also won the World Championships title here last year.
They remained invincible in the London Games and claimed the crown by registering an overwhelming result of 21-11 and 21-17.
World Number one duo Zhang-Zhao played like true champions and wrapped the show in just two segments.
On the other hand, Xu Chen and Ma Jin did not draw a blank and shared second place on the victory stand.
The battle started with top seeded team ruling the court in opening rallies and gaining an early advantage. They unleashed flurry of masterly crafted strokes and completely confounded their rivals.
Zhang and Zhao showed superb coordination and played their given roles masterly. The former pushed the opposing team with power packed smashes while the latter mounted pressure with deceiving net play.
They maintained the upper hand all the way to mid-game break and managed to place an indomitable total of 11 on points table.
The twosome of Xu Chen and Ma Jin made every effort to come out of this deficit after the interval but they could not hit the mark and gave up this futile chase after reading 11-21 score on the board.
However, they put decent fight in following game and justified their presence in the finale of the mega event.
This time they matched their challengers’ speed on court and created trouble by remaining close to them in most part of the game.
Both teams put all in their possession to establish a comfortable lead but neither of them could make difference in first half of the set.
Later part of the game heated up with couple of grueling rallies and then Zhang-Zhao made swift progress in third quarter of the set.
They did not allow their compatriots to narrow the gap and maintained a slight edge until game-point situation. They sealed the crown with a convincing margin of 21-17.
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