Alex Dunn and Eleanor O’Donnell have given themselves a significant boost as they prepare to switch their full focus to senior international badminton by claiming silver medals at the European Junior Championships in Denmark.
The Scottish teenagers went into the mixed doubles competition unseeded but saw off Slovakian fourth seeds Miha Ivancic and Petra Polanc in the last 16 to give themselves a chance of getting into medal contention and went on to guarantee themselves a medal with a straight sets quarter-final defeat of England Callum Hemming and Fee Teng Lieuw.
They then produced an even bigger upset in the semi-final with a great display of character when they recovered from losing a tight opener to Poles Pawel Smilowski and Magdalena Swierczynska, the top seeds to come through 19-21 21-14 22-20.
Having had to play an extra match since their opponents in the final like all of the top four seeds, been given an opening round bye, their tough run came to an end at the hands of Russia’s Rodion Alimov and Avlina Davetova, the seconds seeds, but their coach Robert Blair, a World Championship silver medallist and Commonwealth Games bronze medallist in his own playing days, expressed satisfaction with the way they performed.
"It's obviously a disappointing result, but should not put a damper on what has been a wonderful week for Alex and Eleanor,” he said.
"They have performed very well and risen to all the challenges that faced them. Today they needed to be very disciplined as the Russians were powerful and good on the net. This meant a change of tactics from the previous games and at times they fell into the trap of playing the game where the Russians were strong, but this should be a good experience for them and hopefully get them ready for similar success in senior badminton."
The players echoed that sentiment, both expressing pride at the way they performed.
"I’m extremely happy and proud of how we played this week. It’s been a fantastic tournament and we will take a lot from the experience we have had,” said Dunn, while O’Donnell said: "I'm very proud of our performances this week. It's a lovely way to end our junior careers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here