Top seed Xia ousted in All England thriller

Top seed and former champion Xia Xuanze was ousted from the All England badminton championships 5-7, 2-7, 7-2, 8-6, 8-7 by Hong Kong's Agus Hariyanto in a 66-minute thriller on Thursday.

The Chinese had four match points to clinch a quarter-final place but squandered the lot as joint ninth seed Hariyanto, formerly of Indonesia, claimed a major scalp.

Xia, a bronze medallist at the Sydney Olympics, became the latest big name forced out of the tournament for one reason or another, including most recently the 2001 champion Pullela Gopichand of India who lost in Wednesday's second round.

Other absentees include world champion H.Hendrawan of Indonesia, laid low by a fever on Tuesday, and former All England champion Peter Gade of Denmark who has a knee injury.

The withdrawals had left Xia a good bet to regain the title he won in 2000 but he failed to cash in during the fourth set when he had two match points at 6-3 and again in the action-packed decider when he led 7-6.

The way now looks clear for second seed Chen Hong of China, last year's runner-up to Gopichand. Chen fought his way past Germany's Bjoern Joppien 7-3, 6-8, 7-4, 7-3 to reach the last eight, which contains no Europeans.

In the women's quarter-finals, former world champion Camilla Martin, Gade's fiancee, is the sole non-Asian.

As with the departure of Xia in the men's singles, there was a repeat dose of an Olympic formbook upset in the mixed doubles when Sydney bronze medallists Simon Archer and Jo Goode failed to book a place in the quarter-finals, losing 8-6, 0-7, 7-4, 7-5 to an unrated Japanese pair.

Archer and Goode have only recently resumed playing after he suffered a bad knee injury and she had her second child.

"We are not ready to take on the tops just yet," said Archer.