Canada Open 2026: Aakarshi, Tanya progress to second round

Aakarshi Kashyap and Tanya Hemnath remained in contention even as seven of the nine Indian shuttlers, including former world No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth, exited the Canada Open 2026, a BWF Super 300 badminton tournament, in Ontario on Wednesday.

Aakarshi beat Anna Tatranova of France 21-14, 21-12, while Tanya overcame Disha Gupta of USA 21-16, 21-18 in 35 minutes.

Tanya will play Japan’s Riko Gunji in the second round while Aakarshi will take on fourth seed Beiwen Zhang of the USA next.

Kidambi, meanwhile, retired due to injury just nine minutes into the match against Olympic medallist Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia. He was trailing 10-11 in the first game.

Saneeth Dayanand and S Sankar Muthusamy also had disappointing outings.

Saneeth lost to top seed Yudai Okimoto of Japan 7-21, 11-21 in 34 minutes while Muthusamy stretched his Korean opponent Yoo Tae Bin 21-19, 15-21, 15-21 in a little over an hour.

In the women’s singles, Devika Sihag, Rakshitha Ramraj, Anmol Kharb and Shriyanshi Valishetty lost their respective opening round matches.

Fifth seed and India’s highest ranked singles player in the tournament, Devika Sihag lost to Chinese Taipei's Tung Ciou-Tong 14-21, 15-21 while Anmol Kharb lost to top seed Michelle Li of Canada 6-21, 26-24, 13-21 in 51 minutes.

Rakshitha Sree Santhosh Ramraj lost to Rachel Chan of Canada 21-15, 14-21, 15-21 while Shriyanshi Valishetty went down to Chinese Taipei's Huang Ching Ping 9-21, 18-21.

The men's doubles pair of Arjun Reddy and Achutaditya Rao had earlier lost to fifth seeded Canadian pair of Kevin Lee and Ty Alexander Lindeman 9-21, 7-21 on the opening day.