P.V. Sindhu, who won the silver medal in badminton in Rio Olympics, registered an emphatic victory in her opening game on Sunday. She won 21-7, 21-10 against Israel's Ksenia Polikarpova in the women's singles, setting up a bout with Hong Kong's Cheung Ngan Yi.
She is one of the favourites for the gold, especially in the absence of defending champion Carolina Marin, who missed the Games due to an injury. Since Rio, Sindhu has won medals at each of the big-ticket events, including silvers at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games in 2018, a gold and a silver at the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals and became the world champion in 2019, after reaching the finals thrice in previous editions. With the COVID-19 pandemic delaying the Olympics, Sindhu went for a training stint to London in 2020 before returning to the country to practice under new foreign coach Park Tae Sang, who has worked extensively on her defence in the last few months.
The first day was a mixed bag for the shuttlers. The men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty shocked the world no. 3 pair of Yang Lee and Chi-Lin Wang of Chinese Taipei but in men's singles, but 13th seed B. Sai Praneeth didn't know what hit him as he went down to Israel's world number 47 Misha Zilberman in a 41-minute clash.
-Inputs from PTI
