Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson’s mixed doubles silver at Athens 2004 was the last time Team GB came home with an Olympic medal and Langridge knows how important results like these are for their sport.
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The rank outsiders were thrilled to have just made the knockout rounds but showed they belonged at the business end of the tournament with a composed 21-18 19-21 21-10 victory at the Riocentro.
Ellis – who has signed for Team Derby for next season – and partner Chris Langridge had already exceeded expectations, having arrived in Rio ranked 22nd in the world, claiming the scalps of the third and eighth-ranked pairs.
They did just that and then stormed into the semi-finals where they came unstuck against No.4 seeds Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan. Coming here performing the way we have, beating the pairs we have is wonderful.
“But in the next match we have not played that pair before, which is something we have got to be excited about”.
“You have to believe you are good enough to achieve things”. Since the age of ten, when I started playing, it was, ‘Olympic medal, Olympic medal, Olympic medal.’ Now we…
Ellis said the pair were “deflated” after their semi-final loss and but hopes this medal will also inspire future stars.
“So many people don’t understand what badminton is”.
“It is fantastic – we are one of these pairs that are quite up and down – but this tournament we have shown our ability”.
“On that last set I was so exhausted, I just thought, “Oh please don’t hit it to me, please keep hitting it to Marcus”.
“We got to the quarter-finals of the worlds, and this will give us the belief that we shouldn’t be 22 in the world, we should be top 10, and we will get to top 10”.
“It is all worth it when you win a medal”, he said.
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“But we are in a semi-final, we still have the chance to play for bronze medal and for GB badminton this is big and for us its massive”.
