A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Sunday
Former champion PV Sindhu progressed to the women's singles second round but Lakshya Sen went down fighting to world number one Viktor Axelsen at the Singapore Open Super 750 badminton tournament in Singapore on Wednesday.
Carolina Marin became the first Spaniard to win the All-England badminton championship when she defeated India's Saina Nehwal 16-21, 21-14, 21-7 in Birmingham on Sunday.
World champion Viktor Axelsen of Denmark and Chinese Taipei's No 1 shuttler Tai Tzu Ying will be up for grabs when the high-profile Players' Auction for the lucrative Premier Badminton League gets underway in Hyderabad on Monday.
She might have won almost all big events in a short span of her international career but Olympic champion and World No. 1 Carolina Marin of Spain says she is still hungry for titles.
Pusarla Sindhu sent Indian fans into a frenzy by blasting through Japan's Nozomi Okuhara to reach the gold medal decider for the women's singles at the Olympic badminton on Thursday.
Prannoy and Sen played five times in 2022 with Sen coming into the match with a slender 3-2 advantage.
Saina Nehwal lost to reigning Olympic champion Carolina Marin but her side Awadhe Warriors still beat Hyderabad Hunters in a Premier Badminton League encounter at the Gachibowli indoor stadium in Hyderabad on Monday.
Glasgow World Championship bronze medallist Saina got the better of two-time World champion Marin 22-20, 21-18 and in the process avenged her second round defeat to the Spanish ace at the Japan Open.
Saina Nehwal staged a scintillating comeback to beat reigning world champion Carolina Marin and retain the women's singles title at the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament.
Top shuttlers, including Olympic champion Carolina Marin of Spain and Rio silver medallists P V Sindhu, will be for grabs when the high-profile Players' Auction for the lucrative Premier Badminton League (PBL) gets underway in New Delhi on Wednesday. Besides Marin and Sindhu, Olympic bronze winner Viktor Axelsen of Denmark will be among the 16 Olympic medallists who have confirmed their participation at the second edition of the event to be held from January 1 to 14.
The 22-year-old An powered through in Paris, however, as her controlled pacing finished off He, with the pair at one point delivering a rally that lasted nearly a minute.
Marin Carolina has come a long way to be the reigning Olympic and world champion but the Spaniard yearns for more as she continues her journey towards becoming the best-ever in the sport.
A collection of stunning pictures from the Paris 2024 Games
In the quarterfinals, Lakshya will face Malaysian qualifier Leong Jun Hao.
Marin retained the world title with a 21-16, 21-19 win over the Indian ace.
Kidambi Srikanth's opening round match ended in agony as he retired due to a knee injury after lagging 14-21, 3-11 against Japan's fifth seed Kodai Naraoka.
Yavarivafa would be jailed three times -- once entirely alone for a day, crying and taken from her mother -- before she made it to Birmingham, England at the end of 2019 and finally found a home.
Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu will learn from her mistakes and perform better in future, her father P V Ramana said on Saturday. "(Sindhu's opponent) Carolina Marin has played an excellent game and she truly deserves the championship. "However we assure you under the guidance of her coach (P Gopichand) in the coming years, Sindhu will definitely perform well and keep the hopes of the all the Indians high," Ramana told reporters with a hint of disappointment after the watching the match at the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad.
India's Kiran Geroge moves to quarters, Ashmita bows out of Thailand Open
The London Olympics bronze medallist was trailing 4-10 in the opening game when Marin decided to withdraw from the contest.
Sindhu stands on the brink of history as she pursues the gold medal in the upcoming Games, having won a silver and bronze in 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo edition respectively.
World No. 1 Yamaguchi, however, had to toil hard to get across three-time world champion and Rio gold medallist Carolina Marin of Spain 21-17, 14-21, 21-19 in the day's first match at the IG stadium in New Delhi.
P V Sindhu said she is happy to win a silver in the women's singles badminton event after her gallant attempt to win a coveted gold for India ended in heart-break at the Rio Olympics. "I ended up with silver medal but am really happy," said Sindhu moments after losing her final clash 21-19 12-21 15-21 against two-time World Championship Marin. "I'm really proud about it. I'm really happy. I could not win the gold. But I really worked hard. It was anybody's game.
Ace Indian shuttler P V Sindhu made it to her maiden Super Series final with a stunning upset victory over reigning world champion Carolina Marin of Spain in the Denmark Open.
"In the second set, I was on the slower side. I was trying to make rallies happen but the points went very quickly," she added.
It was Sindhu's third successive loss to Marin, who had won both the Super 1000 events in Thailand in January before finishing runners-up at the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals.
Carolina Marin broke Indian hearts as the World No.1 beat second seed Saina Nehwal in straight game to lift the World Championships title in Jakarta.
It was a smooth performance from Sindhu as she was hardly tested by the Taiwanese qualifier
But Saina, who had lost in the quarter-finals last year, is set to gain 3600 points having made it to the World Championships final this year. Saina will therefore, now have 82, 792 points to her tally, giving her the World No 1 title again.
Spearheading India's challenge at the World Championships, Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu says she is in good form and vowed to better the colour of her past two bronze medals.
Sindhu reminisces about life-changing past seven years, her maiden Olympic medal ahead of WC
Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu avenged her heart-breaking loss at the Rio Games to two-time World Champion Carolina Marin with a thrilling straight-game victory in a do-or-die, women's singles Group B contest and sealed her place at the semi-finals of the BWF World Super Series Finals in Dubai on Friday.
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.
Olympic champion, Spain's Carolina Marin turned out to be the costliest buy of the second edition of the Premier Badminton League (PBL), while Kidambi Srikanth fetched the highest amount by an Indian at the players' auction, in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In front of her home crowd, Sindhu beat the Rio champion in straight games.
'Her defence was the one only problem. (Carolina) Marin and Pornpawee (Chochuwong) are good attacking players, they were using a lot of half smash and straight smash, and when Sindhu's defence goes down on a day, it affects her other skills as well, she gets nervous. But now she has improved a lot in her defence as well. Her endurance on the court is also good.'
Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu beat Olympic and world champion Carolina Marin in the Indian Open final, in New Delhi, on Sunday.
It is Sindhu's first final since winning the gold and the Commonwealth Games last year.
India's Siril Verma climbed a whopping 11 rungs to take the number one spot in the junior men's singles category of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings on Thursday.
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