Olympic champions Axelsen, An Se Young for India Open badminton

By admin On Jan 7, 2025

Jan 07, 2025 09:19 PM IST

Paris Olympic champions Viktor Axelsen and An Se Young headline the Yonex-Sunrise India Open, featuring top Indian players from Jan 14-19 in Delhi.

New Delhi: Paris Olympic champions Viktor Axelsen of Denmark and Korea’s An Se Young will be among the star attractions at the Yonex-Sunrise India Open that kicks off in the Capital’s Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium next week. The January 14-19 tournament will also have a strong Indian presence with double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu, 2022 champion Lakshya Sen, and former world No.1 pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty competing in the BWF Super 750 competition.

Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen, the Paris Olympic champion, will feature in the India Open in New Delhi next week. (AFP)

The tournament, which was elevated to its current status in 2023, is part of the BWF World Tour and offers participants a prize pool of $950,000 along with 11,000 points for the champions. The flagship event for the Badminton Association of India will have a record Indian participation. The hosts are set to field 21 shuttlers across men’s singles (3), women’s singles (4), men’s doubles (2), women’s doubles (8) and mixed doubles (4).

In the last two editions, India had 14 entries each. The 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games men’s doubles gold medallists Satwik-Chirag reaching the final and Asian Games bronze medallist HS Prannoy made it to the singles last four stages in 2024.

Only two players from the top-20 ranked men’s singles players will be missing while the women’s singles draw will have 14 of the top-20 players competing. With many top players in doubles retiring after the Paris Olympics or changing partners, the paired events are expected to come up with a few surprises. From an Indian perspective, it will be interesting to see how Satwik and Chirag bounce back after the latter’s injury and the Paris Olympics heartbreak after being eliminated in the quarters.

The men’s doubles field is led by China’s Paris Olympics silver medal-winning combination of Liang Weikeng and Wang Chang along with Paris bronze medallists Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik of Malaysia, Danish combination of Kim Astrup and Anders Rasmussen and Indonesia’s Fajar Alfian and Muhammad Rian Ardianto.