Peter Gabriel Magnaye and Thea Marie Pomar stunned fourth seed Oliver Leydon-Davis and Anona Pak of New Zealand, 21-9, 21-9, and captured the mixed doubles gold medal in the Sydney International Badminton 2019 in Australia over the weekend.
The title win capped a glorious week for the Filipino duo who shocked the first-seeded pair of Taiwanese Po Li-Wei and Yu Chien Hui, 21-13, 21-11.
Magnaye and Pomar first made their title campaign felt after surprising Australian sixth seed Michael Soon How Lim and Victoria He, 21-13, 21-13, in the opening round before sustaining their charge with victories over hometown bets Dylan Soedjasa and Justine Villegas, 21-12, 21-16, and Ming Chuen Lim and Yingzi Jiang, 21-15, 21-17.
Apart from the golden effort of Magnaye and Pomar, the Philippine delegation also produced one silver and a bronze.
Magnaye and Alvin Morada settled for the men’s doubles silver after yielding to Taiwanese pair Chen Xin-Yuan and Lin Yu-Chieh, 9-21, 21-11, 21-15, while Morada and Alyssa Ysabel Leonardo went home with the mixed doubles bronze.
Morada and Leonardo could have arranged an All-Filipino final but succumbed to Leydon-Davis and Pak, 15-21, 18-21.
The PH team’s performance bolstered its preparations for the 30th Southeast Asian Games in Manila two months from now.
Prior to the tournament, the Nationals have been intensively training in Indonesia for two months.
“We’re using this experience to apply everything that we’ve learned from our recent training,” said Magnaye in an interview with badmintonoceania.org.
