France, India the Netherlands and the USA are through to this afternoon’s WSF Men’s World Junior Team Championship quarter-finals, where they will meet the top four seeds, after a dramatic morning in Jarville and Maxeville.
At Maxeville, hosts France came through a testing encounter with Colombia as they battled through to win 2-1.
France had made a strong start when Laszlo Godde put the No.5 seeds ahead with a hard-fought 12-10, 7-11, 11-8, 11-8 win over Jose Santamaria, before Colombia’s Juan Jose Torres Lara downed French No.1 Brice Nicolas 3-0 to level.
In the third match, 17-year-old Melvil Scianimanico showed no signs of nerves as he put France through to a quarter-final match against No.4 seeds Malaysia with an 11-5, 11-9, 12-10 win.
After the match, France coach Yann Menegaux said: “I trusted Melvil to do the job for the team and he did. We are now going to recover and prepare our quarter-final against Malaysia. Getting to the top 8 was our first goal, now it’s time to try and beat the big guns!”
Two more of the round two ties also went the distance. On the glass court, the USA edged past North American rivals Canada in an entertaining battle during which momentum swung back and forth.
Tad Carney gave the USA the advantage when he came from behind to beat Mohamed Kamal 3-2, clinching the final game 11-9.
Jacob Lin, however, then struck back for Canada, with the 17-year-old restoring parity after he too came back from a game down to win 3-1.
In the decisive final match, Rehan Luthra was able to get the better of Joseph Toth to send the USA through to a quarter-final match against top seeds Egypt.
Afterwards, Luthra said: “That the win wasn’t just for me, but for my country. We all shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears together to make this happen.
“So when it was 1-1, I thought to myself ‘I’ve got to do this for the team!’
Elsewhere, the Netherlands are guaranteed to achieve their highest-ever finish at the championships after they battled past Ireland 2-1.
Dylan Moran gave Ireland a 1-0 lead with a 3-0 win, before Individuals champion Rowan Damming and Knut Hogervorst recorded 3-1 and 3-2 wins over Denis Gilevskiy and Sean Murphy, respectively, to set up a quarter-final clash with England.
The only team to progress without dropping a match was No.6 seeds India, who overcame Australia 2-0, meaning they will face Pakistan in the quarter-final.
The quarter-finals begin today (19 August) at 16:00
Click here for the full results
Schedule, quarter-finals:
16:00 [1] EGYPT v [7/9] USA
16:00 [3] PAKISTAN v [6] INDIA
18:00 [2] ENGLAND v [10/12] NETHERLANDS
18:00 [4] MALAYSIA v [10/12] COLOMBIA