Cover Pearly Tan and Muralitharan Thinaah of Team Malaysia celebrate winning the Women's Doubles Group Play Stage - Group A match between Team Indonesia and Team Malaysia on day four of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Porte de La Chapelle Arena on July 30, 2024 in Paris, France (Photo: Getty Images)
Pearly Tan and Muralitharan Thinaah of Team Malaysia celebrate winning the Women's Doubles Group Play Stage - Group A match between Team Indonesia and Team Malaysia on day four of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Porte de La Chapelle Arena on July 30, 2024 in Paris, France (Photo: Getty Images)
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Despite losing the semi-finals against the world’s highest-ranked women’s doubles team, Pearly-Thinaah have a shot at the bronze medal
The Malaysian badminton women’s doubles team, Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan, qualified for the Olympic semi-finals after defeating South Korea’s Kim So Yeong and Kong Hee Yong in a gripping quarter-final match yesterday.
Currently ranked 13th in the world by the Badminton World Federation (BWF), the duo performed exceptionally against the Korean pair, who are ranked 10th.
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Pearly-Thinaah triumphed over Kim So Yeong and Kong Hee Yong by 21-12 and 21-13 at the Adidas Arena in Port de la Chapelle, bringing them one step closer to the finals and putting a stop to South Korea’s advance.
The only other Malaysian women’s pair to have reached the quarter-finals before was Vivian Hoo-Woon Khe Wei, but they were surpassed by eventual gold medallists Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Takahashi of Japan at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
In a gripping match today, Pearly-Thinaah went up against Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan, who are ranked first in the world in women's doubles. They had met them before during the preliminary group play stage on July 27 and lost both sets. However, they came back energised for the rematch and won the second set.
Despite putting up a good fight, they ultimately lost, but they still have a chance to seize bronze for Malaysia tomorrow, where they will face either Liu Sheng Shu-Tan Ning of China or Matsuyama Nami-Shida Chiharu of Japan.
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