China ensures women's title at Asian Beach Volleyball Championship
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Two Chinese women pairs scored their respective victories to ensure an all-Chinese affair in the final at the 2009 Asian Beach Volleyball Championship here Saturday morning.
Olympic bronze medal winners and top seed Xue Chen and Zhang Xi made an easy sail, beating fifth seed Japanese Mutsumi Ozaki and Ayumi Kusano 21-7 and 21-8 in 28 minutes in the morning.
They will meet compatriots Jin Jieqiong and Yue Yuan in the afternoon final after their fellow peers eliminated another Japanese duo of second-seeded Shinako Tanaka and Sayaka Mizoe 21-17 and 21-14 in 37 minutes.
Jin and Yue broke ahead from 4-4 tie to 8-4 and never looked back in the first set, then established an early 9-3 lead in the second set before winding up the semifinal match in 37 minutes.
The men's final will be competed between top seed Chinese Xu Linyin and Wu Penggen and sixth seed Alexey Kulinich and Dmitriy Yakovlev of Kazakhstan in the afternoon.
Xu Linyin and Wu Penggen, who finished ninth in the Beijing Olympic Games, defeated another Kazak duo Alexandr Dyachenko and Alexey Sidorenko 21-19 and 21-15 in the opening semifinal.
And Alexey Kulinich and Dmitriy Yakovlev rallied from the first set deficit to muscle over second seed Japanese Kentaro Asahi and Katsuhiro Shiratori 11-21, 21-18 and 15-10 in 50 minutes.
