Guangzhou: After crushing PV Sindhu in the semi-finals of World Badminton Championship, Thailand’s Ratchanok Intanon successfully managed to beat her Chinese opponent Li Xuerui in the finals on Sunday at Guangzhou, China. She had a relatively tough time against Li, but managed to get the better off the Olympic gold medallist in the deciding set.
The contest, which lasted for just more than an hour, saw some crunching moments that Intanon managed to capitalize and defeated the World No. 1 22-20, 18-21, 21-14, becoming the first Thai shuttler to win a gold medal at the World Championships.
The Thai wasn’t much impressive in the opening game as she trailed 12-19. However, she came back from behind to win the 10 out of 11 points that were scored in next few minutes and that got her to the winning track. But Li Xuerui won the second game 20-18.
Intanon didn’t allow Li to make the most of her rhythm and managed to claw the deciding set by a convincing margin of 20-14, which her the title.
Meanwhile, in the men's singles, Chinese superstar Lin Dan took the badminton world title for a fifth time after his arch rival Lee Chong Wei was stretchered off the court in the third game.
The current world number one from Malaysia dropped to his haunches at 19-16 down, and then tried to recover. But he had to retire from the match at 20-17 -- leaving Lin, who is world and Olympic champion, to take the title 16-21, 21-13, 20-17.