Indian badminton star P.V. Sindhu yesterday set her sights on reaching world No. 1 after she shook off opening-match nerves to reach the last 16 at the Hong Kong Open.
Last year’s runner-up and current world No. 3 needed a mid-match pep talk from her coaches before beating Thailand’s Nitchaon Jindapol 21-15, 13-21, 21-17.
Afterward, Sindhu, who has been one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes since winning Olympic silver in 2016, told reporters she had her eye on the top spot.
“It’s not going to be easy because there are some players who are coming up, but definitely one day I will be world No. 1, that’s what I feel,” said Sindhu, who was briefly ranked second last month.
Sindhu, 23, narrowly lost last year’s Hong Kong final to Taiwan’s world No. 1 Tai Tzu-ying, who has dominated the rankings over the past two seasons.
Sindhu has had a string of disappointments since, losing five straight finals against Tai.
Sindhu’s last victory against Tai was at the Rio Olympics en route to the silver medal that brought a flood of endorsements.
In August, Forbes rated her as the world’s seventh-highest paid sportswoman.
She said her elevation and high profile had inspired other players in India and raised expectations about her performances.
“A lot of them have been taking me for inspiration, and there are also a lot of expectations now after this year especially. So to meet their expectations I need to be there and I need to keep working hard,” she said.
Also yesterday, fourth seed Chen Yufei crashed out of the tournament 21-14, 10-21, 20-22 after surrendering her early advantage against 24th-ranked Pornpawee Chochuwong.
Chen’s first loss to the Thai in six encounters was overshadowed by a vocal match on the next court, where men’s double sixth seeds Kim Astrup and Anders Rasmussen fought off a spirited challenge from Lu Ching-yao and Yang Po-han.
The energetic Taiwanese duo earned the crowd’s favor against the Danes, who recovered from a drawn-out first game loss to triumph 28-30, 21-19, 21-16 in 76 minutes.
Tai yesterday won her first match of the tournament against Hong Kong’s Yip Pui-yin 16-21, 21-8, 21-14 in 45 minutes.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier