Soh Wooi Yik

Family, junior competition and the 2019 breakthrough

Soh Wooi Yik was born in Kuala Lumpur on 17 February 1998. His father, Soh Goon Chup, was a national shuttler, while his uncle Soo Beng Kiang helped Malaysia win the 1992 Thomas Cup. In a 2021 interview, Soh credited his uncle with encouragement and advice rather than describing success as something automatically inherited.

His junior record distinguishes Asian Junior boys’ doubles bronze with Ooi Zi Heng in 2016 from World Junior mixed-team silver that year. He partnered Aaron Chia in 2017. Their unseeded run to the 2019 All England final, where Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan defeated them, established the senior pair internationally before their major medals arrived.

Sources for this section: [1] · [6] · [10] · [8]

Tokyo 2020 bronze, won in 2021

The Tokyo 2020 Games retained their edition name when the competition took place in 2021. On 31 July, Chia and Soh defeated Ahsan and Setiawan in the men’s doubles bronze-medal match, recovering from a game down to win 17–21, 21–17, 21–14. The result was Malaysia’s first medal of those Games.

That medal did not make them Olympic champions, but it marked a major step beyond their earlier tournament breakthrough. The same experienced Indonesian partnership that had beaten them at All England now stood across the net in an Olympic playoff. Contemporary reporting records both the comeback and Soh’s own account of the medal’s significance to his badminton family.

Sources for this section: [6] · [7]

World medals and a later Singapore title

Chia and Soh returned to Tokyo for the 2022 BWF World Championships and defeated Ahsan and Setiawan 21–19, 21–14 in the final. Their men’s doubles gold was Malaysia’s first senior world title in badminton. It was a World Championships achievement, separate from the bronze they had won at the Olympics the previous year.

The pair added bronze at the 2023 World Championships in Copenhagen after reaching the semi-finals. These results show sustained success across different editions without implying that they won every major final. World titles, Olympic medals and tour events have different competitive formats and histories; keeping the records separate makes the partnership’s achievements easier to follow.

On 1 June 2025, Soh and Chia won their first Singapore Open title, recovering to beat Kim Won Ho and Seo Seung Jae 15–21, 21–18, 21–19. The Super 750 championship added a senior tour victory to their world and Olympic medals, rather than another medal at either of those championships.

Sources for this section: [5] · [10] · [2]

The Paris 2024 bronze-medal comeback

At Paris 2024, Chia and Soh lost a three-game semi-final to Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang, then faced Denmark’s Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen for bronze. BAM’s match report describes six consecutive points that brought the Malaysians back into contention in the second game, which they took 22–20.

They won the deciding game 21–19 on 4 August, securing Malaysia’s first medal in Paris and becoming its first doubles pair to win Olympic medals at two Games. This was a second bronze, not a gold-medal final. The specific recovery explains why the match became a defining moment in their career rather than leaving the result as a bare medal count.

Sources for this section: [3]

Two different finals in the 2026 record

In March 2026, the pair finished runners-up at All England after losing to Kim Won Ho and Seo Seung Jae, 21–18, 12–21, 19–21. BAM identified it as their third runner-up finish there, after 2019 and 2024. Repeated finals demonstrated consistency, but the title remained distinct from their World Championships gold.

In August, they reached the World Championships final in New Delhi and took silver, losing to Liang and Wang 17–21, 16–21. Gold in 2022, bronze in 2023 and silver in 2026 completed their World Championships medal set. These are the dated results checked for this review, not a claim about an unverified current ranking or a future Olympic outcome.

Sources for this section: [9] · [5]