JAKARTA - The women's doubles team of Rachel Allessya Rose/Febi Setianingrum managed to make a big surprise in the first round of the 2026 China Open by eliminating the second seed of the host Jia Yi Fan/Zhang Shu Xian.
The victory of two straight games over the opponent pair with a final score of 24-22 and 21-17 made Rachel/Febu ensure their journey at the Changzhou Olympic Sports Centre, China, continued to the second round.
"We learned from the two previous losses so that from the beginning we tried to immediately improve the mood and focus on attacking first," said Febi in a statement after the match.
This is Rachel/Febi's second victory over the world's second-ranked pair out of a total of six clashes on the competitive arena. They got another victory in the 2026 Asian Badminton Championships which took place in April 2026.
Meanwhile, their four defeats against the Chinese pair occurred at the 2025 China Masters as well as the All England, Australia Open, and Japan Open 2026.
Rachel said that the victory over the second seed was one of their targets with women's doubles coach Karel Mainaky at the BWF Super 1000 level event.
"Our initial target and Kak Karel is to win in this match and it has succeeded. After this, we will focus on the next matches, one by one. Hopefully we can get the best results," he said.
In the second round, Rachel/Febi will face Lauren Lam/Allison Quynh Lee. The pair from the United States qualified for the second round after eliminating Hsu Ya Ching/Sung Yu-Hsuan (China Taipei).
Rachel/Febi is the first Indonesian women's doubles to reach the second round of the 2026 China Open. Previously, their colleagues Amallia Cahaya Pratiwi/Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti had already picked up their luggage.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
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