China's top pair suffer women's second-round exit at All England Badminton

LONDON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- With Jia Yifan being held back by an injured ankle, the women's doubles top seeds Chen Qingchen and Jia from China failed to register a quarterfinal place at the All England Open Badminton Championships on Thursday.

Jia, 26, sprained her ankle during a tough match on Wednesday as the Chinese pair overcame Hsu Ya-ching/Lin Wan-ching of Chinese Taipei 21-10, 15-21 and 21-16 in the opening round. The Olympic silver medalists were determined to keep fighting on Thursday before they fell to Malaysian pair Pearly Tan/Thinaah Muralitharan 22-20 and 21-16.

"I just wanted to try if I could hang on there even if I feel painful," explained Jia. "But I could not move properly with the injured ankle."

The men's doubles top seeds Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty from India were also knocked out of the last 16.

Meanwhile, men's singles world No. 1 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, women's singles world No. 1 An Se-young from South Korea, and mixed doubles top seeds Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong of China all reached the quarterfinals in straight sets.

China's Olympic champion Chen Yufei will fight for a women's singles semifinal place against the fifth seed Carolina Marin. Chen lost twice to the Spaniard at the World Tour Finals last December.