Overview

Australian Badminton athletes Gronya Somerville, Wendy Chen, Setyana Mapasa and Simon Leung are ready to take on Tokyo. The Badminton competition will run from 24 July to 2 August at the Musashino Forest Sports Plaza. While Gronya, Simon and Setyana are set to make their Olympic debuts in Tokyo, Rio Olympian Wendy Chen will be returning for her second Olympic Games. 

Boasting more than 30 Oceania championship gold medals between them, the team of four all qualified for Tokyo 2020 with their international ranking in singles (Chen); doubles (Mapasa and Somerville) and mixed doubles (Leung and Somerville).

Ones to Watch

Keep an eye out for Olympic debutant Gronya Somerville, who will play in the Women’s Doubles with Setyana Mapasa and Mixed Doubles with Simon Leung. The 26-year-old is an eight-time Oceania Championships gold medallist, winning the title in both the Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles. 

Rio Olympian Wendy Chen will make her second Olympic appearance in Tokyo, competing in the Singles. The 28-year-old has won the women's singles titles at the Oceania Championships for six consecutive years from 2015–2020.

The Format

Badminton is a fast-paced racket sport played in singles or doubles, where athletes hit a shuttlecock over a net to land inside their opponent's court. The sport was first introduced to the Olympic programme in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympic Games, and in Tokyo will consist of men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. 

Each match is the best of three games, and the first player or pair to reach 21 points wins the game. A player must win by two points or more to win the game, and a match is won by winning two games. 

In singles, players are divided into 12-16 groups of four players for a series of round-robin stages with the top player from each group then progressing to the round of 16. While in doubles, players are divided into four round-robin groups of four, where the top two ranked pairs progress to the quarterfinals.

China dominates in Badminton, with a total of 18 Olympic gold medals. In London 2012, China won all five titles.

The Draw

Women’s Singles - Group I

• Wendy Chen (Aus)
• Mia Blichfeldt (Den) [13]
• Linda Zetchiri (Bul) 

Women’s Doubles - Group C

• Korea
• China
• Denmark
• Australia 

Mixed Doubles - Group C

• Japan
• Denmark
• Indonesia
• Australia 

What’s The Story

Olympic debutant Gronya Somerville has an interesting bloodline, and through her father, is a descendant of Kang Youwei, a reformer of the Qing Dynasty. Her ancestral links were discovered when she was playing a tournament in China at 16-years-old.

As a result, her social media following grew dramatically throughout Asia.

Facts

The Badminton competition will run from 24 July to 2 August at the Musashino Forest Sports Plaza. 

Shuttlecocks can reach speeds of over 320 km/hr making it the fastest racket sport.

Badminton Snapshot