HomeSportsSaina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikath miss out on Tokyo Olympics 2021 qualification

Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikath miss out on Tokyo Olympics 2021 qualification

@the_news_21

Olympic medallist Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth’s hopes of making it to this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games ended today as badminton’s global governing body “Badminton World Federation” said that no more qualifying tournaments would be played due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This means that only four Indians, PV Sindhu, Sai Praneeth, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, and Chirag Shetty, have qualified for the July-August Olympics in Tokyo.

Olympic silver medallist Sindhu and 2019 World Championships bronze medallist Praneeth will represent India in women’s and men’s singles while Rankireddy and Shetty have qualified for the men’s doubles event.

While 28-year-old Srikanth and 31-year-old Saina were the closest to qualifying among the Indians, Ashwini Ponnappa and N. Sikki Reddy too had an outside chance of making it to the Olympics in women’s doubles.

Players had to be ranked inside the top 16 of the singles rankings in the Race to Tokyo standings and the top eight of the doubles rankings to achieve qualification.

Saina is ranked 22nd while Srikanth is 20th.

Ashwini and Sikki are ranked 26th.

Sindhu, who won gold at the 2019 World Championships, is ranked seventh while Praneeth is 13th.

Saina and Srikanth are ageing and might find it difficult to appear in the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Their chances of making it to the Olympics were significantly depleted by postponement of a number of tournaments that served as qualifiers, most notably the Indian Open, the Malaysian Open, and the Singapore Open, in March and April.

Meanwhile, reigning Olympic champion shuttler Carolina Marin suffered a freak knee injury during training, leaving her doubtful for the Tokyo Games.

As per the report, the doctors conducted a number of tests on Marin, after which they came to the conclusion that the champion shuttler suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury on her left knee.

Marin had earlier suffered an ACL injury on her right knee in January 2019, which kept her out of the courts until September of that year.

She has played in five tournaments so far this year, reaching the finals in five of them and winning four.

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