The women's doubles badminton semifinals took place on Friday with two Chinese duos earning a spot in the gold medal match to take place on Saturday. In the second match of the day, Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan, who won silver at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, needed three sets to defeat Malaysia's Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan.
It's no wonder the match went a little longer than expected since one point took over 100 shots and approximately one minute and 43 seconds to play. It was the most exciting badminton highlight of the day, not involving a marriage proposal. Just watch.
There's no shame in losing when that's what you have to do to win a point. Thinaah and Tan will play for in the bronze medal match on Saturday.
Amazingly, this isn't even the longest rally Tan and Thinaah have been involved with recently. In 2023 at the Malaysian Masters, they were part of a 200-plus shot rally that lasted a little over three minutes.
If you were looking for a favorite badminton team, this is probably them. Pure chaos. Not to mention the fact that Tan recently set a Guiness World Record by smashing a shot so hard it was clocked at 272 miles per hour. What more could you want?
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Women’s Doubles Badminton Match Featured a Wild 100-Shot Rally.
