RACE TO RIO – Luo twins in; Tian and Akvile out

Olympic women’s doubles defending champions Tian Qing / Zhao Yunlei have been passed over as China finally made public its player selection for the Rio Olympic Games.  According to China’s Sina Sports, the world #3 pair will not be defending the gold they won in London and in their place will be world #7 Luo Ying / Luo Yu.  Sending the Superseries Finals champion twins means that Zhao Yunlei will not have to play in two disciplines.  Zhao had parlayed that role into double-gold medal performances not only at the London Olympics but also at the last two World Championships but in 2016, she has only managed to appear in one final in each discipline.

While this may be good news for the Luo twins and while Zhao Yunlei still gets to play mixed doubles in Rio, there must be two losers in this situation.  First, Tian Qing will have to stay home.  In addition, it is expected to result in the retraction of one spot in the women’s singles field that was conditional on Zhao Yunlei participating in two categories.  The unlucky one in that case appears to be Lithuania’s Akvile Stapusaityte.   She finished the Olympic qualifying period ranked #77 in the world and was given her conditional invitation upon the reallocation of Tripartite Commission spots, which were not used in women’s singles.

As had been previously made public, China went with its two highest-ranked entries in the other three disciplines where it had choices to make and will send Chen Long and Lin Dan in men’s singles, Li Xuerui and Wang Yihan in women’s singles, and Zhang/Zhao and Xu/Ma in mixed doubles.

To check out our photo gallery of all of the 2016 Rio badminton qualifiers, click here