Anaïs Ben Mansour took out top seed Pauline Cavé to bag her place in the World Championship final.
There she will meet Anna-Klara Ahlmer who saw off the challenge of Mollie Patterson. It means we will this evening have a new first-time World Champion!
The 25-year-old from France, a rising star in the racketlon world, had by far the most difficult route to the final, emerging from what has been called the quarter of death – so strong that former World Champion Stine Jacobsen finished in the bottom four of the Women’s Elite.
First she beat Holly Ranson 12-21, 21-3, 14-21, 21-8 – an incredible score in the badminton against a strong badminton player in Holly, who has beaten Anaïs at badminton before.
Then she defeated Amke Fischer, thanks to the same scoreline in badminton, with Amke edging fierce battles in TT and squash – 21-23, 21-3, 21-23, 8-3.
Then the semi-final against her compatriot Pauline in what is fast becoming a great rivalry. This was the fifth meeting between the pair, with Pauline having won three of the previous four but Anaïs having made great strides from their first meeting where she lost 21-1, 12-21, 21-3.
Key to the improvement has been the table tennis, which Anaïs has really developed over the last year or so. In the two encounters after the first, she only got five in table tennis, but then a massive leap to 21 16 in Berlin recently and 13 here. She then won badminton, her strongest, in a roughly expected win to seven.
From 15-5 down in squash she dug out some vital points to get nine and put her just six down going into tennis, probably balanced about 50/50 overall for two strong squash players.
There was solid tennis from both, periods of high looping topspin to the back of the court, interspersed with flurries of attack.
But then after the turn Pauline started showing issues with her leg. She still hit good shots but was pressed into more risks and could not chase down defensive balls, and Anaïs pulled away for the win, with a 21-8 victory.
Anna-Klara beat Mollie Patterson in a repeat of last year’s semi-final (both coming from the same quarters of the draw to get there even).
The Swede will be hoping to go one better than last year where she lost by just five.
This semi-final hinged on the table tennis – Anna-Klara is very good, but Mollie is number six in the UK (has been number four). So how much could she restrict Anna-Klara down. It was not exactly the best start, losing the first four points. She gradually fought her way back, to 21-17.
Mollie, coming from a table tennis background, has improved dramatically at her other three sports but needed a big cushion to have a realistic chance of winning the match, and so it proved, as the number two seed won, about as expected to 14 and 9 in the next two sports and it ended 7-7 in the tennis.
