Badminton: Loh Kean Yew loses to Indonesia's Jonatan Christie in Asia C'ships q-final

SINGAPORE - Loh Kean Yew's bid for an Asian title ended on Friday (April 29) after a quarter-final exit at the Badminton Asia Championships.

The reigning world champion, who was also on Friday named The Straits Times Athlete of the Year 2021, was beaten by Indonesian Jonatan Christie 22-20, 23-21 in a tight affair at the Muntinlupa Sports Complex in Manila.

This was the 24-year-old Loh's fifth straight loss to Christie, the Asian Games gold medallist.

Christie, who is two places above Loh in the world rankings at No. 8, also beat the Singaporean at last year's Tokyo Olympics group stage, stopping Loh from reaching the knockout round.

He told The Straits Times after his match: “From first round till quarters, I think I performed better as I played more. As always, I still need to work a lot on my consistency.

“My score with Christie is always quite close but I’m always the one losing the match. Something needs to change.

“The result is quarters this time, but I’ve been focusing more on the process and I see improvements this time and I’m happy that it’s going in the right direction.” 

On what he hoped to improve, he said: “I need to work on making fewer mistakes. There is not a lot of time to prepare as the Thomas Cup is next, and I will try to maintain condition as much as possible.”

This was Loh's third appearance at the Asia Championships, which is a BWF World Tour Super 1000 event and is back after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19.

In 2016 and 2019, Loh lost in the first round.

He will turn his focus to next month's Hanoi SEA Games, where he is aiming to win the men's singles gold.

He then has the July 28-Aug 8 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, before his title defence at the World Championships in Tokyo in late August before the Asian Games in Hangzhou a month later.