India's Lakshya Sen on Thursday progressed to the quarter-finals of the All England Badminton Championships in Birmingham, while HS Prannoy crashed out in the second round.
Leverdez, the world number 31, scored only his second win over Lee in nine matches and said playing without fear helped him in the 75-minute contest at the Emirates Arena.
P V Sindhu stormed into the quarter-finals of the women's singles badminton at the Olympics with an easy 21-15, 21-13 victory over Denmark's Mia Blichfeldt in Tokyo on Thursday.
Set to return after an injury-induced break, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu is aware the road to Paris will be "challenging" and she needs to be "smarter" in her pursuit of coveted gold medal in the French capital.
The 2021 All England Open will be the second tournament this year to offer ranking points to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, after the Swiss Open.
Fresh from their Korea Open triumph, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will look to continue their dream run.
The 26-year-old from Hyderabad lost her momentum after that incident, losing 21-13, 19-21, 16-21 to eventually sign off with a bronze medal, her second in the continental individual championship.
Former World No 1 Saina, the London Olympics bronze medallist, lost 14-21, 21-17, 17-21 to World No 2 Yamaguchi in a 50-minute women's singles clash.
Kidambi Srikanth scored a stunning straight-games victory over world No. 4 Lee Zii Jia but Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen suffered a shock defeat in the opening round of the Japan Open Super 750 badminton tournament, in Osaka, on Wednesday.
P V Sindhu said she has a strategy in place to outwit the World No. 1 in Tuesday's singles final at the Asian Games final in Jakarta.
Neeraj's gold and three other athletics silver medals, along with Saina Nehwal's badminton singles bronze, propelled India's overall medal count to 41 (8 gold, 13 silver, and 20 bronze).
Srikanth held a 4-1 record over Prannoy coming into this match, but the shuttler was unable to deliver. Srikanth won the first game 21-13, but Prannoy won the second set comprehensively.
Sindhu goes down fighting in All England semisSindhu goes down fighting in All England semis
None of the other three quarters boast of such a strong star cast but there would be a few mouth-watering opening round clashes to look forward to.
In sizzling form after clinching the China Open and finishing runners-up at Hong Kong, Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu will look to sign off the year with another crown when she competes in the season-ending World Superseries Finals starting in Dubai from Wednesday. In Rio de Janeiro, Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win an Olympics silver medal in August, but qualifying for the Dubai World Super Series final still was a far cry as she was placed at 16th in the Destination Dubai Rankings with just two events -- China Open and Hong Kong Open -- remaining.
The Tokyo Olympics produced many, many, many emotional moments for the athletes and their coaches...
A look at the country's athletes' showing at the Tokyo Olympics on Friday, July 30.
Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu suffered another heart-wrenching defeat against World No 2 Akane Yamaguchi of Japan to finish as runner-up at the Dubai Super Series Final in Dubai on Sunday.
Indian shuttlers Kidambi Srikanth and Saina Nehwal may have hit global headlines with their big wins against China's superstars of badminton but sadly they have not made it into the state-run Chinese media, which played down their herculean achievement.
Srikanth made an attacking start after the change of ends, putting his smashes to good use, to lead 5-1. Two tight smashes on either side helped the Indian to maintain his lead to 8-3 before he entered the break with a healthy seven-point advantage when Axelsen went to the net.
Olympic silver-medallist P V Sindhu advanced to the semi-finals of the China Open after defeating local favourite He Bingjiao in straight games at the $700,000 Super Series Premier event, in Fuzhou, China, on Friday.
While Saina made short work of USA's Beiwan Zhang, second seed Sindhu had to dig deep to get the better of Japanese Sayaka Sato.
Sindhu and Saina will once again be India's best bet as they look to put up a good show this week.
Indian women's team had won a bronze medal at Incheon four years ago and Sindhu hoped they can change the colour of the medal this time when the multi-sport event gets underway on August 18.
Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu set up a mouth-watering summit clash with Rio Olympic gold medallist Carolina Marin after a hard-fought win over World No 4 Korean Sung Ji Hyun in the semi-finals of the India Super Series, in New Delhi, on Saturday.
The reigning Olympic silver medallist took just 36 minutes to record her 2nd win in the competition.
Sindhu leads India to 3-2 win over Hong Kong in Asia badminton Team Championship
Her reluctance to appear for BAI trials could well end her chances of representing the flag
His backhand blocks and forehand low returns reaped dividends but an alert Gemke managed to grab a four-point cushion at the interval.
In-form PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth will look to break new grounds as they spearhead India's charge for an elusive gold at the 18th Asian Games badminton event which begins with the team competitions, in Jakarta, on Sunday.
With the straight-game victory, Sindhu became the first Indian to achieve the feat.
Seven Indian shuttlers, including Saina Nehwal and Jwala Gutta, officially earned qualification berths for the August Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro after the much-awaited BWF world rankings were released on Thursday. Friday's rankings were used to determine the Olympic qualifiers in each of the five categories -- men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles -- from the points accumulated in the period between May 4, 2015 and May 1st, 2016. Four years ago, five Indians had qualified at London Olympics. This year, London Olympics bronze medallist Saina would be representing India in her third Games, while the women's doubles pair of Jwala and Ashwini Ponnappa will also play their second Olympics in August. Besides, K Srikanth and P V Sindhu earned their maiden Olympic berths in men's singles and women's events respectively. For the first time, India will have two women's singles players playing in the Olympics.
World champion P V Sindhu was beaten 18-21, 12-21 by Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu-Ying in the semi-finals of the Olympics badminton and will play for the bronze medal now.
Sindhu has said while there will be a lot of expectations on her going into the Tokyo Olympics
Indian contingent has an opportunity to go deep in the draw and recapture the trophy which has been won by just two Indians so far -- the legendary Prakash Padukone (1980) and P Gopichand (2001).
On Saturday, Sen had become only the fifth Indian after Prakash Nath (1947), Prakash Padukone (1980, 1981), Pullela Gopichand (2001) and Saina Nehwal (2015) to reach the final of the prestigious tournament after outwitting defending champion Lee Zii Jia in a gruelling semi-final.
Young Indian shuttlers K Srikanth and H S Prannoy advanced to the quarter-finals of men's singles at the Japan Open, but it was curtains for teen sensation P V Sindhu in the US $200,000 Super Series event, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, on Thursday.
Sindhu seeks improvement on fitness, defence in se
He is known to be a demanding coach but Pullela Gopichand is of the opinion that Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu's odd defeats can't be termed as her failure, not even by a single per cent.
Sindhu said she has to watch out for the Chinese players as well since they have been missing from the circuit for some time.
