Olympic Badminton 2016: Mixed Doubles Medal Winners, Scores and Results
The Indonesian pairing of Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir dominated Malaysia's Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying Wednesday in the Olympic badminton mixed doubles final, 21-14, 21-12, en route to winning gold.
Here is a breakdown of the medal winners, including Tuesday's bronze-medal match between a pair of Chinese teams:
| Tontowi Ahmad/Liliyana Natsir (INA) | Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying | 21-14, 21-12 |
| Zhang Nan/Zhao Yunlei (CHN) | Xu Chen/Ma Jin (CHN) | 21-7, 21-11 |
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Despite Indonesia's rich history in badminton, Wednesday marked its first Olympic gold medal in mixed doubles.
Natsir previously took silver alongside Nova Widianto in 2008, but her partnership with Ahmad is what finally pushed her over the top.
Despite Indonesia having never won mixed doubles gold prior to the 2016 Summer Games, Natsir and Ahmad entered as the favorites due to their dominance in recent years, as seen in this tweet courtesy of Badminton Indonesia:
Natsir and Ahmad received congratulations from the official Olympic Twitter account, which also tweeted some photos of the dynamic duo in action during their golden performance:
Dutch badminton star Selena Piek praised the Indonesians for their remarkable showing as well:
Malaysia has found itself on the podium in badminton at the Olympics on multiple occasions over the years, but it is still seeking its first gold.
The silver won by Chan and Goh still made history, however, as it was Malaysia's first medal in badminton mixed doubles.
Indonesia handled the underdog team with relative ease, but as Chris Jansing of NBC News pointed out, the gold-medal match still featured some entertaining and awe-inspiring moments:
China and South Korea had previously won every Olympic gold in mixed doubles, but the breakthroughs by Indonesia and Malaysia suggest that more parity will be present in the discipline moving forward.
The Chinese have largely dominated every badminton event in Olympic play since it was introduced into the program in 1992; however, Natsir and Ahmad provided some hope that the overall level of competition is on the rise.
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