AFP/London


Defending champion Lin Dan beat great rival Lee Chong Wei in a gripping men’s final as China sealed a historic clean-sweep of all five Olympic badminton titles yesterday.
“Super Dan” battled back from a game down to win 15-21, 21-10, 21-19, adding to his list of accolades as he became the first men’s singles player to win the Olympic title twice.
Shortly afterwards, Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng won the men’s doubles final 21-16, 21-15 against Denmark’s Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen, clinching the fifth and last badminton title for China. China’s team had been rocked when women’s doubles top seeds Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli were among eight players disqualified in a match-throwing scandal which prompting a public apology from their head coach, Li Yongbo.
But they won the women’s doubles regardless, as well as the mixed doubles and the women’s singles, through Li Xuerui in an all-Chinese final, to become the first country to take all five since badminton’s Olympic debut in 1992. In the men’s final Malaysian top seed Lee, who had almost missed the Games because of an ankle injury, faded a little from the middle of the second game, allowing Lin’s magnificent range of strokes to flourish.
When Lee’s final shot dropped long, Lin, often described as the best player in badminton history, sprinted round the stadium, ripped off his shirt and wept in celebration, saluting the crowd as he held the Chinese flag.
Meanwhile Lee cut an inconsolable figure as he sat alone on the empty court. But there had been moments, especially when Lee was leading 18-16 in the final game, when it seemed he would sensationally his avenge defeats to Lin in the Beijing Olympic final and the world title-match in the same arena last year. Lee claimed to have had only two weeks’ training after suffering a serious ankle injury in June. But he lasted the 79-minute thriller extraordinarily well. In the end, however, Lin was just a little mentally stronger, and was able to make use of an unequalled repertoire of strokes in which the element of surprise is always present.
Lin’s extravagant celebration must have accentuated the misery of Lee, who has spent 199 weeks as world number one, as he lost yet another major final to his career nemesis.
It was often a cat-and-mouse contest with both men coaxing the shuttle accurately around the court in mesmeric patterns, mixed with sudden lunges and unpredictable pounces on anything too short at the back or too high at the net.