OLYMPIC DUMMY LISTS Mar 29 – Maja suffers collateral damage

Maja Tvrdy (photo) of Slovenia did nothing wrong since last week. She didn’t even get passed by any other player, but this week’s Olympic Dummy list sees her out of the Olympic program – had the qualification period stopped now.

By Raphaël Sachetat. Photos: Badmintonphoto

This is simply the consequence that a change in the women’s doubles qualification list leaves one less spot for the women’s singles as Michelle Li had – until last week – qualified both in singles and doubles, freeing up one extra spot in the women’s singles that was taken by the Slovenian last week. With Li and Alex Bruce barely missing this week’s cut, it also means one more bed will be needed in the Athletes’ Village for the women’s doubles players. Hence, the Slovenian is now the first reserve player.

There were no other major changes in the world ranking as the Polish Open played this week-end didn’t influence rankings that much. Nathan Robertson and Jenny Wallwork did make up a bit of ground on their rivals Chris Adcock and Imogen Bankier, who still quite far ahead for the only British ticket in mixed doubles.

In the men’s singles, no change from last week where the big change was Chen Jin’s appearance in the top 4 with a ticket now available for him. He will play the Australian Open next week and might get an extra bit of points to get away from the Dane Peter Gade, who will have to perform in India’s Super Series and his home European Championships if he wants to kick the Chinese ace out of the Olympics by May 3rd.

On the bottom of the list, Czech’s Petr Koukal (photo) is the last man who could qualify according to our calculation but he may very well suffer from the same problem as Maja, should Thailand’s Bodin and Jongjit take over from Adcock and Ellis in the men’s doubles dummy list – they are currently very close to the English. Should the Thais perform better in the Autralian Open next week, this means that Chris Adcock would only be qualified in the mixed, and hence, another spot would be taken off the men’s singles list. And Koukal would fall one spot short in similar conditions than Tvdry this week.

One spot for four…

The women’s doubles list is the one with most changes as Canada’s Li and Bruce give way to Paula Obanana and Eva Lee (photo) from the USA for the only Pan American spot. The Amercians were runners-up in Poland and their 3400 points were enough to pass their main rivals by less than 600 points. Both pairs are involved in the Finnish Open this week end in Helsinki, as are Nicole Grether and Charmaine Reid and Iris and Rena Wang, who are all within few hundred points away. This should be a thrilling week-end for Pan-American badminton, as one pair might just pass the others and secure THE spot for the Olympics… (link to the Finnish Internationals HERE)

With just one month to go before the deadline, everyone is now throwing it all to make the cut.  Stay posted for our next dummy list to be published next Thursday, April 5th.

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Badzine’s lists are not official. Only the BWF is entitled to give the names of the qualifying shuttlers. We provide it only to give fans, and players themselves, a better view of the players who could potentially qualify for the London Olympics. These lists are updated by our trio of experts amongst which a BWF-certificated umpire – and takes into account the BWF’s own qualification rules.

Please find the latest lists at the links below. They have been calculated using the world ranking points published by the BWF from May 1st, 2011 to the present. We hope to continue to provide weekly updates from now until the end of the qualification period.

The Dummy Lists for March 29th 2012
Men’s Singles
Women’s Singles
Men’s Doubles
Women’s Doubles
Mixed Doubles

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You will always be able to find the latest dummy lists on this page, or find it in our ‘Features’ menu at the top of any Badzine page. To see the complete current BWF world rankings, click here and you can still find the links to past dummy lists using the links below:

March 22nd
March 15th
March 8th
March 1st
January 19th
December 29th
(the three oldest sets of lists were compiled differently, using then-current world ranking points, thus including tournaments from before the start of the Olympic qualification period)
December 1st
November 3rd
October 6th