Canada adds four badminton medals on Thursday afternoon
Five Canadians were in action on the final day of badminton competition, winning four medals (more below).
Men’s singles final
Guatemala’s Kevin Cordon cleanly beat Canada’s Andrew D’Souza 2-0 (21-13, 21-14) on Thursday.
Cordon’s aggression from the middle of the court was just too much for the 21-year-old Canadian to handle. “He didn’t let me play net when I wanted to, he didn’t let me take the attack,” said D’Souza who had friends and family from Ottawa in the building.
Ottawa’s Andrew D’Souza during his men’s badminton singles final at TO2015.
Canada finishes the badminton competition with six medals (one gold, three silver, two bronze). An administrative error kept men’s doubles team of Adrian Liu and Derrick Ng from even competing at Pan Ams.
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Mixed doubles final
Americans Phillip Chew and Jamie Subandhi have beaten Canada’s Alex Bruce and Toby Ng in mixed doubles.
Chew and Subandhi easily won the first set 21-9.
In the second set it looked like a swift American victory when Vancouver’s Toby Ng would take command and pull the Canadians back from the brink. At 21-21 an Alex Bruce drop-shot grazed the net and fell onto the American side setting up a 22-21 Canadian lead. In the next rally Ng eyed a long shot and let it go, giving the set to Canada 23-21.
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The crowd roared for Canadian points. Stamping their feet on the bleachers at the Markham Pan Am Centre. “The crowd helped us a lot, luckily we were able to force them into a couple mistakes,” said Bruce about the middle set.
Chew and Subandhi stopped Ng from defending his Pan Am mixed doubles title (with partner Grace Gao) by winning the decisive set 21-12. Ng has been playing with Bruce since the early summer of 2013.
Women’s singles final
In an all-Canadian final Michelle Li out-classed Rachel Honderich 2-0 (21-15, 21-9) to become a two-time Pan Am champion.
They are training partners just up the road from the Markham Pan Am Centre. And they are bronze-medallist doubles partners from earlier in the week. For all that there are no apologies on the court, “Of course I would have wanted to beat another player, it sucks to have to beat a teammate and a really good friend but that’s part of the game,” said 23-year-old Li.
Rachel Honderich (left) holds up her silver medal next to Michelle Li, who won women’s singles at TO2015.
Afterwards, 19-year-old Honderich reflected on the loss to her training partner, “To have both of us in the finals is really exciting, there’s no one I would have rather played, no one I would rather lose to, I’m really happy for her,” she said.
