Guangdong gold medal hopefuls Chen Qiqiu/Fu Haifeng, top seeds in the men's doubles, reached the final after ousting legendary Sun Jun/Liu Yong of Jiangsu at the 10th Chinese National Games here on Friday.

Veterans Sun and Liu, who won out with impressive fightback after lagging behind in the team and doubles events in the previous days, failed to nick Chen/Fu's progressing road, losing to their rivals 17-14, 15-7, leaving a mountain-high task to their teammates Zhang Jun/Cai Yun, who crashed Sichuan's Xie Zhongbo/NiuXin 15-9, 15-2 in the other semifinal.

Guangdong also advanced triumphantly into the women's doubles, with their ace Yang Wei/Zhang Jiewen overcoming Liaoning's Zhang Dan/Zhang Zhibo 15-4, 15-9 without a hitch.

The most hopeful favorites will have to meet Hubei's Gao Ling/Wei Yili before they could really taste the flavor of the women's doubles crown.

Gao/Wei made it to the final after beating another Liaoning's pair Du Jing/Yu Yang 15-12, 15-11.

The Guangdong badminton team was disappointed when it lost both the men's and women's team titles to Jiangsu and Hunan respectively, hoping to secure three doubles events titles as consolation.

In the men's singles, third seed Bao Chunlai of Hunan eased through Fujian's Chen Hong with a straight 15-9, 15-12 win in the semifinal, gaining the revenge chance to face his long-time contender Lin Dan from China's Army in the final.

In an earlier match, top seed Lin gave himself a wonderful 22nd birthday present by entering the singles final after beating Jiangsu's rising star Chen Jin 2-0 in the other semifinal.

Bao, world number three, will clash with Lin Dan again. The top two men's singles shuttlers in China have met eight times in the international games since 2003, with Lin winning seven, including the recently concluded China Masters final.