TOKYO — Japan’s
Akane Yamaguchi retained her
badminton women’s world title in front of her home crowd in Tokyo on Sunday,
beating China’s Chen Yufei 21–12, 10–21, 21–14.
اضافة اعلان
The top-seeded Yamaguchi, who won her first world
title last year in the Spanish city of Huelva, had to dig deep to see off the
challenge of Olympic champion Chen.
Chen was bidding to become the first player from
badminton powerhouse China to win a women’s singles world title since 2011.
China has won a total of 15 women’s singles world
titles — five times more than any other country — but number four seed Chen was
the nation’s first women’s world finalist since 2014.
The 25-year-old
Yamaguchi cruised through to the final without dropping a game this week in
Tokyo.
She steadily turned the screw on Chen in the first
game before sealing the deal with a no-nonsense smash.
Chen came roaring back in the second game and leveled
the match when Yamaguchi swatted a return into the net.
Yamaguchi regained the upper hand with a big early
lead in the third game, and she made it stick, closing out the match when Chen
hit a return into the net.
The win gave Yamaguchi her second title of the year,
after lifting the trophy at the All England Open in March.
The women’s singles competition at this year’s
worlds was hit by injury, with 2019 champion PV Sindhu of India and Japan’s
2017 winner Nozomi Okuhara both pulling out on the eve of the tournament.
In the men’s final earlier in the day, Denmark’s
Viktor Axelsen claimed his second world title with a 21–5, 21–16 win over Thailand’s
Kunlavut Vitidsarn.
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