Hall defeat hurts medal hopes spacey

BADMINTONDarren Hall's defeat in the fourth round of the World Championships left England looking for a rare chance of medals in the doubles event in Lausanne yesterday.

Only three medals have been won by England in the last five World Championships and Hall's chances of adding to them disappeared when he went down 15- 4, 17-14 to the left-handed Dane, Peter Rasmussen.

The former European champion from Essex finished a disappointed man, having carved out a lead of 14-9 in the second game by scoring better at the net and producing several well disguised slices, and six times had a point to level the scores. But too often Rasmussen scored with a fast and deceptive smash.

England's most encouraging result came in the mixed doubles in which the young partnership of Ian Pearson and Joanne Davies recovered from a nervous start to overcome the seeded Ukrainians, Duzchenko and Evtoushenko, 0-15, 15-6, 15-4. Four English mixed doubles pairs in all managed to reach the last 16.

England's most disappointing result was in the men's doubles. The European champions, Simon Archer and Chris Hunt, who have had injury problems and failed to win a match in the team event, missed a match point and disappointingly went out in the first round to the Thai pair, Sudhisodhi and Siripul. However, Julie Bradbury and Joanne Wright lifted English spirits by reaching the fourth round of the women's doubles with two wins.