Magees not carried away by European Badminton Championships win

Chloe Magee insists she and brother Sam are not getting ahead of themselves after beating one of the favourites in the first round of the European Badminton Championships in Kolding, Denmark.

The Raphoe siblings have always shown a lot of promise in mixed doubles and just missed out on qualification for the Rio Olympics, despite missing out on the majority of qualifiers in the final year with Chloe focussing on singles.

That decision paid off as she joined an elite group of Irish athletes by appearing in her third Olympics but she has now turned her attention exclusively to the mixed doubles and the results have been immediate.

Dutch duo Selean Piek and Jacco Arends secured a bronze medal at the 2016 Europeans but with Piek returning after a spell on the sidelines through injury, they could not match the Irish number one pairing.

The Magees won the first game 21-17 and with the second on a knife-edge at 21-21, claimed the final two points to bag a famous win.

“Sam and myself had a really good match beating the No 5 seeds and we’re very happy with that,” said Magee.

“The next round (today) is against a good French pair. They’re very strong, hitting it quite hard.

“The arena is very hot and very quick so we’re going to have to get our tactics right if we wanna do well.

“If we can play like we did (in the first round) we’re gonna have a good chance but we need to play well and that’s the case for any game in the Europeans. We’ll take one match at the time and after that we’ll see how it goes.”