Gicquel/Delrue Make History for France

A first-ever final place for France at the BWF World Championships came with an unusual end-game.

Having pulled level from a game down, Thom Gicquel and Delphine Delrue saw themselves steaming ahead of Jiang Zhen Bang/Wei Ya Xin with 12 points in a row. That phase effectively sealed the contest in favour of the French, for although the Chinese tried to make a match of it, the gap was too wide. Gicquel/Delrue bettered their performance from the last edition when they took home a bronze medal. This time it will be gold or silver against top seeds Feng Yan Zhe/Huang Dong Ping.

“We were not ready to lead 12-0 in a semifinal,” said Delrue. “But we were really focussed on the first three shots and we put a lot of pressure on him (Jiang) specially. We wanted to show that nothing will be easy and at the end it was stressful because they played without pressure, so we needed to stay focussed after that.”

“We’re very happy, we played a great match. The intensity was very high, the stress also. Super proud to reach our first final at the World Championships.”

Gicquel revealed that they had been working with their mental coach on dealing with the fallout of losing the first game. That situation came into play today with Jiang/Wei edging them in the opening game, but the French duo fought right back.

“Lately we haven’t been good after losing the first game,” said Gicquel. “We have competed some times where we couldn’t digest the loss of the first game. This time we worked that out with our mental coach. We were so ready to fight, to make the match hard for them, and they felt that. They felt our attitude was positive and we fought very much. Of course after a big lead like that in the third we had a lot of chance to win, but it isn’t easy, and we were stressed and they tried till the end. But we are really happy to play like this and behave like this mentally.”