Carrying pleasant memories of their last outing at the Istora, Anne Tran and Margot Lambert delivered a takedown of Li Wen Mei/Liu Xuan Xuan in the opening round of the KAPAL API Indonesia Open 2024.

The French duo had won their opening encounter at the Indonesia Masters 2024 in January, and with the throaty crowd yelling its support, found the right game to unsettle the Chinese, 21-19 21-18.

“We’d won a round here in January. We have some good feelings from the Indonesia Masters,” said Tran. “It’s incredible in there. When we stepped on court there was an Indonesian match next to us and the crowd was amazing.

“It’s a good win, we played well, we managed the conditions. Always a great feeling to win in Istora.”

There will be plenty of attention on them in the run up to Paris 2024 with the Olympics on their home turf, and Lambert said they were building up well, physically and psychologically, for the biggest event of their lives.

“We’re doing a lot of physical (work) so we can be at our top form during the Olympics,” said Lambert. “But we’re also playing a lot of badminton so we can feel the court and play good tactically. This result gives us a lot of confidence, obviously. Beating a top Chinese pair in two games, that’s really good. We played well tactically with the conditions. It’s always a bit tricky in Istora because there’s a lot of wind, but we managed to play really well so happy about that.”

“After the European Championships, we had a two-week break, so it was good to refill our energy and since then we have been preparing, like four weeks before these two tournaments (Singapore and Indonesia) and six weeks after… the Olympics is a goal we had in our minds and it keeps motivating us to keep pushing in training every day.”

WHAT OTHERS SAID:

“It was a good first round. I adjusted to the hall very well. You have to keep the drift in mind; overall, I could play my game freely. Both my last two matches were good, particularly against Viktor last week. It was a really high quality match and that gave me a lot of confidence as he’d just won a tournament,” – Lakshya Sen, after beating Kanta Tsuneyama.

“Quite solid, happy with the match. Relieved, I’d say as well, because Lee (Cheuk Yiu) is a tricky opponent. On his best days he’s not a fun guy to deal with, so I’m happy with the outcome. The body is good, I haven’t been playing as many matches as I’ve been hoping for over the last few weeks, so I’m ready here for the big one.” – Anders Antonsen, after a quick 36-minute result over Lee Cheuk Yiu.

→Results (Day 1)

→Order of Play (Day 2)