August 11th, 2016 was the first day of 10 in the Olympic badminton competition in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio. Here are the results from day one.
Day 1 of Olympic badminton is in the books, as all five Olympic events (Men’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Mixed Doubles, Women’s Singles, and Women’s Doubles) were in the beginnings of group stage.
The badminton competition began bright and early at Riocentro in Rio de Janeiro at 8:00 a.m. local time (7:00 a.m. ET) and extended well into Thursday evening. For the first few days of Olympic badminton competition, all three sessions (morning, afternoon, and evening) will be used at Riocentro.
For both the Men’s and Women’s Singles during the group stage, players are sorted into Groups A through P with either three or four players per group, playing essentially a round robin tournament before quarterfinals seeding. All three Doubles events have four associated groups: A through D.
A notable match on Thursday was Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei defeating Suriname’s Soren Opti 2-0 in their first match in Group A. Lee is considered to be one of the two primary contenders for Olympic gold in Men’s Singles along with China’s Lin Dan.
On the American front, Paula Lynn Obanana and Eva Lee competed in Group B in the Women’s Doubles against South Korea’s Shin Seung-chan and Jung Kyung-eun, losing 2-0. In the Mixed Double’s, the United States duo of Phillip Chew and Jamie Subandhi lost to South Korea’s Ko Sung-hyun and Kim Ha-na, 2-0. In the Men’s Doubles, Americans Sattawat Pongnairat stumbled 2-0 to China’s Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan in Group B.
Overall, there weren’t any massive upsets in the first day of the preliminaries of all five badminton competitions. That being said, the United States seems to be outclassed in all of its events. Will players like Howard Shu help America in the coming days?