Zii Jia advances to Olympic semi-finals

The country’s professional men’s singles player, Lee Zii Jia successfully advanced to the semi-finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics, eliminating Anders Antonsen from Denmark in straight sets.

In the quarter-final action at the Porte de La Chapelle Arena, Lee registered a 21-17, 21-15 victory over the world number three ranked player, who is also his good friend, to continue his recent streak of wins in major tournaments.

The victory thus helped Lee close the gap on the meeting record with Antonsen, with the Malaysian player having won four out of nine matches, between the two so far.

In Sunday’s semi-final, Lee will meet 2023 world champion Kunlavut Vitidsarn from Thailand, who pulled off a sensational surprise by eliminating the world number one player from China, Shi Yu Qi in a jaw-dropping 21-12, 21-10 straight sets victory.

Lee advanced to the quarter-final after eliminating the host nation’s Toma Junior Popov 21-13, 24-22 in the last 16 on Thursday, thus showing an improvement from his performance at the Tokyo 2020 Games, when he lost to the Chinese champion Chen Long at the last 16 stage.

The shuttler said said he was able to exhibit an energetic performance in the match because he focused on one point at a time and was not overly eager to win.

“I am very happy to have made it to the semifinals but the challenge must continue. I was surprisingly very calm for myself and I can feel his (Antonsen) desire to win, may be that’s one of the reason he made a lot of unforced errors.

“Olympics always got surprises and there are no favourites, anything can happen, so it just depends on how we can handle our situation. I am also not 100 percent sure that tomorrow I can handle the situation like today,” he said.

Asked about his meeting with Kunlavut in the semi-finals, Lee said no matter who he meets in the semis, the mounting task will certainly be tough against the player from Thailand who looks to be in his best form, especially today.

Separately, Antonsen said he was sad and disappointed because he had very much wanted to win and make it to the semi-finals.

“Not the way I wanted the Olympics to go, I wanted to do better obviously. I tried to do multiple things, tried to change game plan but it didn’t work. Zii Jia is definitely good enough for gold, but so is everyone else who is incredible on their best day,” he said.

- Bernama

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