Shin Yu-bin and Lim Jong-hoon Win WTT China Smash Mixed Doubles Title
The Korean table tennis pair rallied from deep deficits to defeat Taiwan’s Lin Yun-ju and Cheng I-ching in five games, earning their third WTT series title of the season.
South Korean table tennis stars Shin Yu-bin and Lim Jong-hoon won the mixed doubles title at the 2026 World Table Tennis China Smash after completing a dramatic five-game comeback in Beijing.
The Korean pair defeated Taiwan’s Lin Yun-ju and Cheng I-ching 3-2 in the final played Friday. The match unfolded through a succession of close games, with the Koreans prevailing 12-14, 11-9, 16-18, 13-11 and 11-8.
Shin and Lim were pushed to the brink after losing the third game in an extended deuce, leaving them down two games to one. Their position became even more difficult in the fourth game when they trailed 10-3, putting the Taiwanese pair one point away from the championship.
Instead of conceding, the Koreans erased the seven-point gap and took the fourth game 13-11 to force a decider. They again had to recover in the fifth game, falling behind 5-1 before turning the contest around and closing it out 11-8.
The result brought Shin and Lim back to the top of an international podium just two weeks after they earned a mixed doubles bronze medal at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. At that tournament, they lost in the semifinals to China’s Lin Shidong and Kuai Man. Their victory in Beijing provided an immediate response to that disappointment and reinforced their standing as one of Korea’s leading table tennis partnerships.
The China Smash championship is the pair’s third WTT series title this season. They also won the Star Contender Ljubljana event in June and the US Smash in July. The three victories give their 2026 campaign a strong record across major international events, with the latest title distinguished by the pressure they survived in the final.
For Shin and Lim, the decisive feature of the Beijing match was resilience. They recovered not only from a games deficit but also from major point deficits in each of the final two games. The fourth-game comeback kept their title hopes alive, while the turnaround in the fifth completed a win that had appeared increasingly unlikely.
The championship adds another major result to South Korea’s table tennis season and gives the mixed doubles pair fresh momentum after their Asian Games bronze.