Selena Piek, Cheryl Seinen, Chloe Birch and Lauren Smith will be the players going for gold in the Women’s Doubles category at the European Games.

In the first of the semi-finals Dutch Selena Piek/Cheryl Seinen played the second seeds Ekaterina Bolotova and Alina Davletova, Russia for a spot in the final.

The Russians won a thrilling first game 21-18, while the Dutch won the second 22-20. The Dutch kept the momentum leading 11-8 at the interval in the third game, and for the first time at the European Games a Dutch pair reached the final. The underdog won the semi-final 18-21 22-20 21-14.

- We kept fighting for every point, and you could see (in the second game), that they got nervous. They made a nervy mistake at 19-19, as she smashed quite wide out, so I said to Cheryl: “Come on, they are nervous as well”. Maybe we also had some luck, and in the third game we manage to take the lead and walk away, Selena Piek said.

Golden GB?
Lauren Smith and Chloe Birch, Team GB, have been solid throughout the tournament, and multiple players say that they are the ones to beat, if you want to be European Games Champion.

In the second semi-final of the day Smith and Birch were in control. The Brits, who are ranked 30 in the World, won in straight games 21-13 21-13 against the 2018 European Championships runner-up, Emilie Lefel and Anne Tran from France.

- We have been very dominating in the games up until today, and we wanted to do the same. We knew that we needed to bring our best game. We needed to make the court big for them and really exposing their movement and I think we did that well today, Lauren Smith said.

The European Games Women’s Doubles final will be played on Saturday night.