Badminton: Trio in nail-biting wait

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Three New Zealand badminton players have an agonising wait in cyberspace to discover if they have won Olympic tickets.

Mixed doubles pair Tammy Jenkins and Daniel Shirley, and singles player Geoff Bellingham are still in with a chance to qualify for the September games - even though they fell short of the mark at the Waitakere International tournament in Auckland at the weekend.

But a world ranking list on the Internet this Friday should determine their fate.

New Zealand coach Graeme Robson hopes the frustration will not drag out even further under a complex qualification system.

"It's a nerve-racking wait. But there's nothing we can do about it now," he said. "We know where we will stand, but we don't know what's happened to players on the other side of the world."

While some of the world's top seeds battled in Auckland for Olympic spots, others were doing the same at the European championships overnight.

Jenkins and Shirley are the better bet to sneak through. They made the semifinals in Auckland - the last tournament for Olympic points - and along the way beat Australia's top pairing of Peter Blackburn and Rhonda Cator, ranked 10th in the world.

It was a promising sign for Jenkins, who has struggled with a back injury for six weeks.

The New Zealanders were knocked out by Canadians Michael Beres and Kara Solmundson, who cemented their Sydney spot with the win but lost yesterday's final to unseeded Hong Kong pair Albertus Njoto and Mei Mei Chan.

Bellingham's Olympic hopes are slight. He advanced as far as the quarter-finals, losing to Agus Haryanton, of Hong Kong.

He must head off Australian Rio Suryana in Friday's rankings to be the top Oceania player. Suryana's hopes were bolstered by making the men's singles final - although he lost to Korean Hyun Lee, 15-8 15-0.

Even if Bellingham gets the Oceania spot, he may not be selected by his own national body.

"The criteria we set down say our players had to be eligible to make the top 16," Robson said.

"It's frustrating when you see other sports have simply qualified because they topped Oceania - I think there should be a consistent application across all sports.

"But we'll wait and see where Geoff finishes up in the rankings."

One of the top competitors in Auckland over the weekend will not be at the Olympics despite winning both the women's singles and doubles yesterday. Chen Wang, once ranked among the world's top women, has just moved from China to Hong Kong so she is ineligible to compete at the games.

She crushed world No 9 Kanako Yonekura, of Japan, in an almost errorless final display, 11-1 11-2.