BADMINTON: The Nanjing Sports Institute Gymnasium is expected to get crowded as the world’s young shuttlers take to the courts from 17 to 22 August for the 2nd Summer Youth Olympic Games, Nanjing 2014.
Not only is badminton one of the most popular sports in China, of particular interest will be the new mixed doubles format which combines one male and one female athlete from different NOCs.
“This is part of the IOC concept for the Youth Olympics, which the Badminton World Federation (BWF) supports because we believe it can help build closer ties between the athletes and the other NOCs. As much as these Games are about developing young talent, it is also about bringing youth together through sports as well as the culture and education activities,” said Lawrence CHEW, event delegate and BWF council member.
Australia will field two athletes, 18-year-old Daniel Guda and 15-year-old Joy Lai, who will both compete in the singles and the doubles.
Due to the lack of precedent and a ranking system for such a format, the pairings were done by matching the top-ranked singles players in the women’s list with players from the bottom half of the men’s list, and vice versa.
“All the singles players will take part in the mixed doubles so the NOCs did not have to enter any additional players. We matched the top half with the bottom half from the respective ranking lists so that the pairs will be evenly matched against others, with one player stronger than his or her partner,” said BWF events manager Venugopal MAHALINGA.
The matching of the pairs was done on 8 August at the BWF headquarters in Malaysia. Women’s singles top seed and world No. 1 ranked junior Akane YAMAGUCHI (JPN), will partner Ruslan SARSEKENOV (UKR), No.27 in the men’s world junior ranking.
SHI Yuqi (CHN), the top seed and world No. 1 men’s junior singles player, is paired with Australia’s Joy LAI, world No.35 junior women's singles.
On 15 August, BWF conducted the mixed doubles draw for the Nanjing 2014 Games which sets YAMAGUCHI/SARSEKENOV against Tessa KABELO (BOT)/Aditya JOSHI (IND) in the first match at 18:30 on 17 August.
The men’s and women’s singles draws were also carried out to place players into eight groups of four.
In the men’s singles, SHI, the men’s singles runner-up at the 2014 BWF World Junior Championships, is in Group A with Bernard ONG (SIN), Sungjae SEO (KOR) and Abraham AYITTEY (GHA).
YAMAGUCHI, a two-time women's singles world junior champion is in Group A with Mia BLICHFELDT (DEN), Thilini Promodika HENDAHEWA (SRI) and Chlorie CADEAU (SEY).
The men’s and women’s singles, and mixed doubles offer three gold medals. There are 64 players in total – 32 men and 32 women. Each NOC has entered one man and one woman athlete with China, as the host, being represented by two men and two women.
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