Seasoned Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth will look to keep their Olympic hopes alive when they compete at the $170,000 Barcelona Spain Masters starting here today.
The Indian duo has been inconsistent in 2019 and didn’t enjoy a good start to the new year.
While Saina has crossed the first round in only one of the three events in 2020, Srikanth has lost in the opening round in all three tournaments that he has played so far this year.
Saina and Srikanth are currently ranked 18th and 15th respectively, while being placed 22nd and 26th in the Race to Tokyo rankings, which takes into consideration only the points accumulated from the tournaments played in the last one year.
According to the BWF Olympic qualification rules, only two players from each singles category can qualify if their ranking is within the top-16 by April end.
Among the Indians, world champion P V Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth and men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have almost secured their berths for the Tokyo Games.
With the Olympic qualification cut-off date ending in April, there are only seven tournaments, including the Barcelona Spain Masters, left in the calender and the Indian duo will have to produce consistent performances to earn a ticket to Tokyo.
London Bronze-medallist Saina, who is looking to make her fourth Olympics, will begin her campaign here against Germany’s Yvonne Li.
Third seed Srikanth, on the other hand, will face fellow Indian Subhankar Dey, who notched up a morale-boosting win over world No 20 Indonesian Shesar Hiren Rhustavito in the Asia Team C’ships on Saturday.
Srikanth, who was also a part of the team in Manila, won two of his singles matches and lost one last week and he would hope to go deep in the draw in the tournament.