Loh Kean Yew is out of the 2025 BWF World Championships in a shock quarter-final defeat.
The Singaporean, the 2021 world champion and ninth seed in Paris, went out in straight sets to the unheralded Victor Lai of Canada on Friday (29 August) — with Lai securing Canada’s first ever Badminton World Championships medal by reaching the semi-finals.
However, Loh — who missed two months of the season through viral illness — told Olympics.com afterwards that despite his disappointment, he felt he had a relatively successful tournament.
“Honestly, I think I actually exceeded my own expectations in terms of performance, because I wasn’t prepared at all when I came here. I just kept fighting and I guess I played better than I thought.”
Loh’s slow starts have been a talking point so far this week and it appeared to be the case again here against a man who began the 2025 season ranked 99th in the world and entered these Championships as the world number 50.
While this time the Singaporean did score a few points in the early exchanges, he found himself trailing by three at the interval in the first game against an opponent playing in his first World Championships. Lai clearly wasn’t to be underestimated — after all, he’d already taken down 11th seed Lu Guangzu in a stunning upset in the second round.
Ninth seed Loh then rallied for seven consecutive points to finally put some distance between him and Lai, but he let Lai back into the game to level at 19–19, then again at 20–20, as their see-saw tussle continued.
After saving a game point, Lai converted on the first of his own — then went on a run in the second. Loh had taken the first four points, but Lai won the next eight and seemed to get to Loh on a point in which Lai fell under the net and Loh sent wide in response before unsuccessfully complaining that he had been hindered by the Canadian.
Visibly frustrated by the umpire calling the point, Loh later explained: “The umpire decided that I wasn’t distracted, he made the decision that I wasn’t affected by it, and anyway I think this is certainly something new. I never thought you could go over the net without getting a fault without touching the net.”
Lai, for his part, admitted to nerves later — not that you would know. He kept his focus even as Loh mounted a late comeback attempt and closed out the narrow win, 22–20, 21–18.
For the 20-year-old who returns to university next week, it’s the latest feather in his cap in a year in which he has already beaten the likes of Naraoka Kodai and Lu Guangzu.
“I think just my training this year, I had a couple of blocks of training on it like 5-6 weeks and thart helped me build up physically,” Lai told Olympics.com. “I don’t have the power, the strength of those other guys, but I think I make up for it with my mental and my skills.”
The BWF World Championships are available to stream live (territorial restrictions apply) on Olympic Channel via Olympics.com and the Olympics mobile apps.