David Toupe had a rollercoaster of a day at the Huamark Indoor Stadium in Bangkok, playing 4 matches in men’s singles and mixed doubles, 394 nerve-wrecking points that clocked up nearly 3 hours of court-time.

The French WH1 player was humble in victory and generous in defeat today after participating in some of the most exciting badminton the Huamark Stadium has seen.

His day started in mixed doubles with new partner Emine Seckin from Turkey, a reasonably comfortable win over Ngoc Binh Truong (VIE) and Wanlapa Pinchai (THA) 21-13, 21-10. The comfortable feeling didn’t last long however. 45 minutes later he and Emine were back on court for their second mixed doubles against Japan’s Hiroshi Hurayama and Rie Ogura, which lasted over an hour and finished 23-21, 21-23, 22-20

“It was crazy because it was always close, every game went to sudden death! It took a lot of energy, both physically and mentally, especially as Emine and I haven’t played together before. But at the end, it is better to win!

I had to play singles just 10-15 minutes after finishing that mixed doubles. It was not the only reason that I did not play my best singles, but it did not help. Physically I was tired and I struggled to get a good length with a clear to clear. That put more pressure on my drop shots, they needed to be accurate and in these conditions in Thailand that is also difficult. But Yoshi (Young-Chin Mi, GER) played well! Take nothing away from him.”

Toupe went on again later today to face Indonesia’s Agung Widodo, another close fought battle that finished 21-12, 18-21, 21-18

“I hope to have an answer tomorrow, but today was not a good day for me in singles.  I still have a chance to progress in the singles. It’s like a knock-out stage for me now, between myself and the Thai player, one of us can go through.”

Read : Strong European showing on Day Two

A BWF view on the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games qualification regulations 

Following yesterday’s article about the Paralympic announcement from the IPC, we had a chance to speak with Syahmi Sabron from the BWF about the main points of interest from those regulations.

“A player can qualify for the singles through either the Road to Tokyo 2020 singles ranking list, or through the doubles ranking list.  We had to ensure that the mechanism that we put in place to allocate the number of players per event totals a maximum of 90 participants for the Games. In order for that to happen, whilst we had already confirmed 14 classes to the event, we need to see some players compete in both doubles and singles to make any event viable, with a minimum of 6 players or pairs making up an event.

Part of our goal was to include all Para-Badminton classes from WH1 - SS6. We also aim to have all the disciplines (MS,WS, MD, WD, XD) included which we have. Obviously to have all 22 events included would be amazing but it was simply not viable with the allocation. 

If we would like to have more players qualify in each event, we would need to reduce the number of events or have more slots allocated to us. The current guidelines provide an opportunity for everyone (except for female SS6) to qualify for the Paralympic Games.

Unfortunately, female SS6 were not included as we had to look at various factors including worldwide participation when proposing the Badminton program.

It will be tough for everyone including the elite athletes to qualify but the opportunity is there”.

For a full list of the Thailand Para-Badminton International draws and results this week click here