In what has been the match of the tournament so far Ronan Labar and Audrey Fontaine battled through a three-set thriller against Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Alexandra Boje to move into the quarter finals at the Orleans Masters Super 100.
The European bronze medallists and number two seeds knew that they had a difficult match on their hands but went into the game with a clear plan.
-Fischer is world class we know that. We knew that he loves to come forward so we tried to put pressure on him a bit and get the shuttle in behind him.
The Danes took the first set leaving an uphill battle for the French but Labar and Fontaine stuck to their plan and remained focused in its execution.
-There has been a lot more service faults called today than yesterday but we kind of expected that. The idea was to stay calm and keep focused and keep going every point.
After taking the second set the final game was evenly balanced at 17-17. The French went on to take the game 21-19 and put the success down to the support they could feel from the stands.
-Those last few points we could feel the crowd behind us and all the kids shouting for us. There was even a funny situation where the kids thought we had won the match but didn’t realise Audrey had a service fault called against her.
-For now we are happy to get through this match and progress as the last few years in Orleans we have had pretty poor results.