World Championships | 7 Dec 2016

Golden DIACONU and DRAGOMAN rewrites history books

Sun International 2016 World Junior Championships

 

Adina DIACONU and Andreea DRAGOMAN have put their names into the history books after becoming the first European partnership to win a Doubles title at a World Junior Championships. The Romanian pairings, the No.4 seeds, beat second seeded pair Japan's Hina HAYATA and Miyu KATO in the Girls' Doubles final (11-7, 11-8, 11-6, 5-11, 9-11, 11-9) at the Sun International 2016 World Junior Championships.

Romania’s previous best effort in the Girls’ Doubles category was a third place finish.

 

 “It was amazing and unbelievable that we could be world champions in the Doubles. It’s like a dream to me. I think the semi-finals loss in the Singles really motivated me a lot for the final of the Doubles. My partner and I have been playing together for more than a year and we understand each other very well on table. I think we played an amazing match today and I am so excited to win a world title this year” – Adina DIACONU said.

 

Earlier, Adina enriched her treasury with bronze medal in the Singles Event. MAK Tze Wing of Hong Kong ended her great run. In semifinal MAK succeeded in straight games (12-10,11-7,11-7,11-9). In the final SHI Xunyao provides China with sole gold medal for 2016 World Junior Championships. She beat Mak Tze Wing in another straight games duel (11-2, 12-10, 13-11, 11-3).

 

“I am so excited winning the first gold medal for China in the competition but I am little bit disappointed that we could not win more gold medals. Perhaps we were inexperienced because we have not played more international competitions. The final match looked simple in terms of the results but my opponent was very strong particularly in the second and third games as the scores were so close” – said SHI Xunyao.

Japan’s Tomokazu HARIMOTO overcame CHO Seungmin of Korea in the ultimate match of the Championships. The final went full seven games (7-11, 9-11, 11-6, 12-10, 11-8, 7-11, 11-7)

 

Korea Republic has won its second Doubles gold medal, following a Boys' Doubles triumph for AN Jaehyun and CHO Seungmin over the top seeds from Japan Tomokazu HARIMOTO and Tonin RYUZAKI (7-11, 11-8, 11-4, 11-3, 11-4). In the semifinal Japan’s players prevailed in the match against Alexandre CASSIN and Joe SEYFRIED of France 4:3 (8-11, 6-11, 11-7, 12-10, 11-8, 8-11, 14-12).

 

CHO Seungmin and KIM Jiho are the crowned Mixed Doubles champions. They beat YUKI Matsuyama and HINA Hayata of Japan (7-11, 11-9, 11-9, 7-11, 8-11, 11-3, 13-11) in the final of the event.

 

“I am so happy that we won our first gold medal in this competition and I am hoping to add more in the Boys’ Doubles and Boys’ Singles. In the final game they were leading 10-8, but I knew we could get back into the game because we understood ourselves very well” said CHO Seungmin.

 

Bronze medal went to XU Haidong and YUAN Yuan of China, as well to Darko JORGIC of Slovenia and Izabela LUPULESKU of Serbia.