Russia’s young mixed doubles pair, Rodion Alimov and Alina Davletova, went into today’s final of the Syed Modi International in Lucknow, India as underdogs against their well-established and experienced English opponents Marcus Ellis and Lauren Smith.

The 2017 European Junior Championships winners had never, until today, won a title on the HSBC BWF World Tour – but today saw them win their first, hopefully the first of many.

After a close first game, Alimov and Davletova took control of the match when changing sides with a 21/18 win. In the second game it was their English opponents who got off to the best start, but after the interval the Russians never looked back. They went from being down 11-8 at the break to take a decisive 17-12 lead before winning the game, and thereby the title, 21-16. After their win, Alimov and Davletova spoke to Badminton Europe:

 

-We are very glad that we were able to win today – we are overwhelmed by the emotions of the victory. We have been waiting for this for a long time and finally we succeeded, Davletova wrote to Badminton Europe. This is a very important tournament for our Olympic qualification campaign, and we are pleased to gain important points from the event. This is however only a step on the way, so we will continue to play and win more titles before we are sure of qualifying, Alimov commented.

-Our chances are good, as recent results show, and we have beaten four pairs from the world Top-15 in the past few months. We will not stop here, but work hard to achieve even better results, Davletova ended.

The win is also very good news for Russian badminton as the National Badminton Federation of Russia tries to qualify players in all categories for the Tokyo Olympics.

-Today our athletes took a big step towards the main goal, to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games, Team Manager of the Russian national team, Victor Volkov, told Badminton Europe. Over the past year their results have been improving and they have gotten more stability in their performances. We hope that this process will continue and if it does, our athletes will reach their goal of qualifying. There are many competitions ahead where it will be necessary to make more good results to improve their ranking. The most important thing is that they have now started to beat top pairs in the world, and this gives them confidence. 

-We have a goal of qualifying Russian players in all five disciplines for the Tokyo Olympic Games, and today’s results was a good step towards achieving that, Volkov ended.

Spain’s Carolina Marin went into the women’s singles final as the clear favorite, being up against the young Phittayaporn Chaiwan, whom she had never played against until today. Marin was in control from the beginning, taking the opener with a convincing 21-12-win. The second game became closer than the first, but after having been 9-3 down, Marin started her comeback and in the end won the game 21-16 securing the title on her first match point. The win at the Syed Modi International was the second title in 2019 for Marin, and the second title after her comeback from a long term knee injury. The injury she sustained back in January, keeping her out of international competition for more than seven months. The European Badminton Queen is back!

The only local hope in today’s finals, men’s singles player Sourabh Verma could not finish off an impressive week with a win, as his opponent, Wang Tzu Wei from Chinese Taipei proved too strong and won the title with a convincing straight games win.

Baek Ha Na/Jung Kyung Eun won an all Korean women’s doubles final, and in the last final of the day China’s He Ji Ting/Tan Quang clinched the mixed double title when beating their Korean opponents.

To see all the results from the Syed Modi International 2019 – click here.