Badminton
Swiss Open: Treesa/Gayatri reach quarters, Ashwini/Tanisha knocked out
Treesa/Gayatri moved to the quarter-finals of the Swiss Open Super 300 tournament as Ashwini/Tanisha were knocked out.
Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly have become the first Indian doubles pair to make it to the semi-finals of the All England Open (Source: BAI)
Indian women's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand moved to the quarterfinals of the Swiss Open while Tanisa Crasto/Ashwini Ponnappa were knocked out on Thursday.
Treesa/Gayatri defeated fellow Indians Priya Konjengbam and Shruti Mishra and they did it without breaking much sweat. The Indian pair won 21-10, 21-12 in just 36 minutes.
World no. 26 Treesa and Gayatri, who are sharing the 14th place in the Olympic Games qualification ranking, will face Australia's Setyana Mapasa and Angela Yu in the next round.
Later in the day, World No. 20 Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa, who are 6,296 points ahead of Treesa and Gayatri in the Paris qualification race at 12th spot, lost 17-21 16-21 to Japan's world No. 30 Rui Hirokami and Yuna Kato.
The race for Olympic qualification thus spiced up in women's doubles as only the highest-ranked Indian pair inside the top 16 by April end will cut Paris.
Double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu, in-form Lakshya Sen, Kidambi Srikanth, Kiran George, and Priyanshu Rajawat will be in action in the singles event later in the day.
The biggest face-off will be between Sindhu and 17-year-old Tomoka Miyazaki, who claimed the gold medal at the 2022 World Junior Championships and is coming into the tournament after winning her maiden Super 300 crown at the Orleans Masters in France last week.
Sen will take on Chia Hao Lee of Chinese Taipei, while Srikanth will face top seed Lee Zii Jia.
