 "India's Lakshya Sen in action against Chinese Taipei's Chou Tien Chen in the men's singles badminton quarter-finals of the Paris Olympics on Friday. AP")
Lakshya Sen became the first male shuttler from India to qualify for the semi-finals of an Olympics on Friday. Lakshya defeated Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien-chen 19-21, 21-15, 21-12 in the quarter-finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics to script history.
Paris Olympics: News, schedule, medals tally and moreSen had previously beaten fellow Indian HS Prannoy 21-12, 21-6 in the pre-quarterfinals on Thursday.
The previous best for India in the men’s singles badminton tournament at the Olympics was Parupalli Kashyap (London 2012) and Kidambi Srikanth (Rio 2016), both bowing out in the quarter-finals.
Sen will next face Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen, who defeated Loh Kean Yew of Singapore 21-9, 21-17, in the semi-finals on Sunday (4 August). Axelsen is the reigning Olympic champion and had previously won bronze in Rio 2016.
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It was a neck-to-neck affair between Sen and Chou Tien-chen in the first game. Chou had taken an early 5-3 lead, and Sen followed that up with a spirited effort to make it 6-6 at one stage. Chou, however, was even more aggressive with his range of shots which led him to take a 11-9 lead in the first game.
Sen, however, fought back once again to level the scores at 15-15, and even though the Indian led at 17-15 and later 18-17, he surrendered that lead before losing the first game 21-19.
In the second game, Sen was off to a strong start, going on to take 4-1 lead. However, Chou fought back immediately to take a narrow lead of 5-4. Chou was even better in terms of court coverage, and played in a way as if he was almost forcing Sen to play a few bad shots.
However, both the shuttlers continued unleashing fiery smashes against each other, and the duo eventually went into the halfway mark of the second game with Sen leading 11-10.
Sen gradually gained momentum in the contest, allowing him to take an 18-13 lead in the second game. From then on, it was Sen all the way in the second game, eventually going on to seal it 21-15. The three-game contest as 1-1 and it set up brilliantly for an exciting decider.
Sen led the third game at 5-4, and by this time, the Indian knew how to tackle Chen. He punished Chen with a series of smashes to take a 11-7 lead at the mid-game break, before eventually keeping his lead and winning the game 21-12 to reach the last four stage of the Olympics.