{"id":12573,"date":"2026-05-04T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/?p=12573"},"modified":"2026-05-04T08:01:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:01:01","slug":"champions-china-deny-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/champions-china-deny-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Champions China deny France"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>China retained the Thomas Cup after a nearly four-and-half-hours battle against a resilient France in Horsens, Denmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The French, playing in their maiden Thomas Cup Finals, bowed out 1-3 in the final. But it was a tie that could have easily gone their way, especially with the way their three singles players threatened their Chinese rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\u00a0Jiting-Ren Xiangyu secured the triumph with a 21-13, 21-16 doubles victory over Eloi Adam-Leo Rossi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The win was China\u2019s 13<sup>th<\/sup> in the series and made up for the Chinese women\u2019s 1-3 defeat to Korea in the Uber Cup Final earlier in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>World No. 1 Shi kicked things off with a 21-16, 16-21, 21-17 nail-biter over No. 4 Christo Popov, putting the Chinese out in front. The Chinese world number one, had to dig deep to overcome Christo \u00a0in the 85-minute encounter. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christo had beaten Yuqi for the BWF World Series Finals title last December and was always a threat in the match but Yuqi managed to stave off the Frenchman this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second singles, saw Alex Lanier&#8217;s pick up a surprisingly easy 21-13, 21-10 win over world number seven Li Shifeng.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Toma Popov Junior then fell Weng Hongyang in another close-as-can-be contest, 22-20, 20-22, 21-19 after a 96-minute struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That win put China on the cusp, the team title sealed in the doubles. A fifth match-up &#8211; which was set to feature Christo and Toma in doubles &#8211; was therefore not needed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After winning just one Thomas Cup between 2014 and 2022, the Chinese men have now won two in a row, having beaten Indonesia in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>FINAL RESULTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>China beat France 3-1 <\/strong>(Shi Yuqi bt Christo Popov 21-16, 16-21, 21-17: Li Shifeng lost to Alex Lanier 13-21, 10-21; Weng Hongyang bt TomaJunior Popov 22-20, 20-22, 21-19; He Jiting-Ren Xiangyu bt Eloi Adam-Loe Rossi 21-13, 21-16)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China retained the Thomas Cup after a nearly four-and-half-hours battle against a resilient France in Horsens, Denmark. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-12573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-badminton"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup-.jpg",1066,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--768x432.jpg",640,360,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--1024x576.jpg",640,360,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup-.jpg",1066,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup-.jpg",1066,600,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup--590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/category\/newsbeat\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/China-Thomas-Cup-.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12575,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12573\/revisions\/12575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}