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Archer and Goode win Britain's first Olympic
badminton medal Simon Archer and Jo Goode have given British racket sport
a huge boost by claiming the mixed doubles bronze medal at the Sydney
Olympics. They become the first ever Britons to win an Olympic badminton
medal. However they needed to save two match points, and a painful chest
injury to Simon Archer before overcoming the Danes Michael Sogaard and
Rikke Olsen 15-4, 12-15,17-14 in a tense and exciting match.
Speaking after the medal winning victory, Simon Archer said, "it's
such a proud moment for me, I cannot express just how delighted I am for
British badminton that we have won a medal here. It's a massive
achievement on behalf of the whole squad and it shows that we have a sport
that is capable of producing world class players in Britain.". Simon went on to say, "my chest was really causing
me problems because I couldn't smash properly and made so many mistakes. At the end it
was hurting badly and you could see just how much it restricted me because
of the number of shots into the net."
Although the pair were disappointed they were not playing for gold, Jo
Goode was delighted that they were not coming back from Sydney empty handed.
After losing the semi-final from match-point up to winning the bronze from
match-point down, Jo said "I know I thought it was a goner again, but
we kept it together. We were strong mentally. We knew it was the last one and we
really went for it." First Badminton Olympic Medal This is the first
medal success for the British since the sport was introduced at Barcelona
in 1992. It looked as though we might miss out again as Archer's injury
worsened. However, with the first game in the bag for the Brits, it took
the Danish 4th seeds time to get into the match. Archer and Goode were
seeded 5 and by the third game were losing 9 - 6, but in a marvelous fight back
eventually clinched victory.
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